![]() ![]() But slightly longer versions of this show have been available in bootleg form for years, so there is nothing here that serious U2 fans will treasure for its missing-in-action rarity. This punchy, dynamic set is notable for the glorious guest appearance by Harlem’s Voices Of Freedom gospel choir on “ I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. Hamming it up like a first-time tourist fresh off the boat, Bono amplifies his mid-Atlantic twang as he shamelessly flatters the New York audience, who naturally lap up every blarney-drenched word. New to the official U2 canon, though, is the band’s Madison Square Garden show from September 1987, a solid recording lifted from what sounds like a crisp, professional soundboard mix. The uneven extra disc of outtakes and B-sides is virtually identical, and only of marginal interest to anyone seeking to understand the album’s broader musical hinterland. In truth, almost all of this material has been released before, mostly on an expanded 20th-birthday edition in 2007 (the original album here uses the same remaster). U2 are talking up this 30th-anniversary repackage, which comes in “super deluxe” quadruple CD and seven-disc vinyl formats, as a timely political statement, holding up their love-hate romance with Reagan’s America as a dark mirror to Trump. They would never sound this fruitfully innocent again. The Joshua Tree remains one of U2’s most consistently excellent albums, and arguably their sole masterpiece. From the shimmering gallop of “ Where The Streets Have No Name” to the Reagan-bashing military-industrial bombast of “Bullet The Blue Sky”, from the sultry, eroticised languor of “ With Or Without You” to the radiant religiosity of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, this harmonious weave of antique signifiers with gleaming modernist textures still dazzles three decades later. It was an audacious collision of vaulting ambition and juvenile arrogance, commercial calculation and cultural appropriation.īut the resulting music was spectacular. Lyrically, meanwhile, Bono soaked himself in a literary pantheon including Norman Mailer, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Raymond Carver, Allen Ginsberg and many others. Musically, U2 borrowed from Dylan, Springsteen, Hendrix, Peggy Seeger, Woody Guthrie and more. Produced by the holy trinity of Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno and Steve Lillywhite, The Joshua Tree became a monumental experiment in monochrome myth-making. Tightening up their open-ended songwriting methods into more traditional structures, they made a conscious effort to work with the “primary colours” of rootsy Americana. After almost a decade as rootless post-punks with awkward Christian leanings, U2 finally baptised themselves in the mighty star-spangled river of gospel, blues, folk, country, rock and soul. The aim, according to guitarist The Edge, was to “follow the blues and get into America”. It elevated the Irish quartet into global superstars, sold a staggering 25 million copies and remains an unsurpassed career peak. But U2 finally settled on The Joshua Tree for their fifth LP, a smart title that perfectly encapsulated its cinematic mix of widescreen landscapes and thirsting, quasi-Biblical lyricism. Later, briefly, “Desert Songs” was a contender. Never before have U2's big messages sounded so direct and personal.It was almost called “The Two Americas”. With the uniformly excellent songs - only the clumsy, heavy rock and portentous lyrics of "Bullet the Blue Sky" fall flat - the result is a powerful, uncompromising record that became a hit due to its vision and its melody. Not only are Bono's lyrics obsessed with America, but country and blues influences are heard throughout the record, and instead of using these as roots, they're used as ways to add texture to the music. Unexpectedly, U2 have also tempered their textural post-punk with American influences. That means that even the anthems - the epic opener "Where the Streets Have No Name," the yearning "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" - have seeds of doubt within their soaring choruses, and those fears take root throughout the album, whether it's in the mournful sliding acoustic guitars of "Running to Stand Still," the surging "One Tree Hill," or the hypnotic elegy "Mothers of the Disappeared." So it might seem a little ironic that U2 became superstars on the back of such a dark record, but their focus has never been clearer, nor has their music been catchier, than on The Joshua Tree. It's a move that returns them to the sweeping, anthemic rock of War, but if War was an exploding political bomb, The Joshua Tree is a journey through its aftermath, trying to find sense and hope in the desperation. Using the textured sonics of The Unforgettable Fire as a basis, U2 expanded those innovations by scaling back the songs to a personal setting and adding a grittier attack for its follow-up, The Joshua Tree. ![]()
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