Beautiful day (U2) (LP 4776 - 4780)

U2  All That You Can't Leave Behind  (CD, Island Records, 2000) **** 

U2  How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (CD, Island Records, 2004) *** 

U2  No Line on the Horizon (CD, Island Records, 2009) **** 

U2  Songs of Innocence (CD, Island Records, 2014) *** 

U2  Songs of Experience (CD, Island Records, 2017) *** 

Genre: Rock, pop

Places I remember: The Warehouse, JB Hi Fi

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Beautiful Day (All That You Can't Leave Behind)

Gear costume: Wild Honey, Walk On (ATYCLB), Summer of Love (Songs of Experience)

They loom large in his legend (The Album Collection playlists): Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7; Part 8

Active compensatory factors: A new millennium and U2 returns to their signature sound and I'm back on board after a couple of disappointing nineties albums. I wasn't alone, but that left the band in a precarious position. How much do they revitalise the classic U2 sound, and how much do they experiment? Afterall that combination was responsible for their best albums so far - War, The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby.

All That You Can't Leave Behind still retains some production tropes from those experimental years but marries them, mostly successfully, to the traditional U2 sound. That sound includes nineties masterpiece Achtung Baby. That warm tone has returned.

Wild Honey, Walk On and Beautiful Day are good examples of that tone and U2's pop smarts. All are terrific songs that are standouts.  The rest of the songs have their moments but the album's varying styles ultimately make it seem like a long album. 

How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb kicks off with an anthemic U2 number - Vertigo, which deliberately lunches their mainstream rock sound for the early naughties. 

The production is a back-to-basics approach with a clean rock sound that I generally like, but there is no Achtung Baby style reaching for greatness. Nevertheless, it's still a good U2 album.

Five years went by before their third album in nine years - No Line on the Horizon. It's a return to a particular type of U2 experimentalism with Bono abandoning first person narratives and the band toning down the familiar U2 shapes that dominated How to Dismantle...It's also an album I'm not very familiar with - as in I've probably played the album once in the years since its release.

To make up for that, I've played it four times back-to-back for this post. It's definitely grown on me. There seems to be a maturity about the meditative and melancholy sound. At times it vergers on an ambient soundscape. Bono's lyrics also fit this mood, and so it's ripe for continuing rediscovery.

Songs of Innocence came after another lengthy five plus years break. In 2014, the album courted controversy by being an automatic download to itunes. It came to my inbox but I ignored it and bought a physical copy instead. I like to choose my music thanks, rather than being forced into that kind of situation. I think Bono and Apple eventually got the message, because they haven't repeated this promo trick.

It's a double CD (a five-track bonus CD is listed as CD2), so I've listened it (and follow up Songs of Experience) even less that No Line on the Horizon. That makes for a long listening experience. Usually, a double CD is a statement of importance, but this just feels like a lot of fair to middling U2 songs to me (remember I haven't listened to it a lot). Nothing much stands out yet, in other words.

Songs of Experience is a more succinct statement and I enjoy it more than Innocence, but it's a lot like How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb in that it's U2 producing their tried and true sounds without getting above a canter. In summary - the progress made towards a mature U2 on No Line on the Horizon has come to little with the two Songs of...albums. Time again for a fresh approach if they want to stay relevant, methinks.

Where do they all belong? That's it for U2 in the 21st Century - a bit hit and miss, nevertheless, U2 are an important rock band and when they get desperate enough they can produce landmark records.