And those with an original vinyl copy have to deal with the terrifying blow-up of Adam Clayton’s orange perm on the cover.īono rating: A cry of confusion to the heavens. Yet the claustrophobia ultimately presses in too tightly. With Steve Lillywhite returning to produce (he had also overseen their debut Boy),they occasionally punch through the piousness, such as on Gloria. Assembled while deep in their Christian evangelical phase, U2’s second album is vulnerable and self-questioning, qualities that have never brought out the best in the group. U2 recorded October as Bono, The Edge and Larry Mullen Jr wrestled with whether they actually wanted to be in an acclaimed new wave rock band in the first place. Yet Rattle and Hum reeks of misfired ambition and presumptuousness – flaws that would haunt U2 through their career.īono rating: A horse-frightening falsetto
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There were some cracking tunes amid the mush and Desire gave the group their first British number-one single. Rattle and Hum was a love letter to America: but did it have to be to such a deeply cliched vision of America? The blues, rail-roads, cowboy hats – here was a picture-book USA gleaned from old Life magazine spreads.
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#PEARL JAM ALBUMS WORST TO BEST MOVIE#
The stereotype of Bono and the Edge as pious cowboys, tassels in a perpetual twist over the state of humankind, was crystallised with this concept record / movie soundtrack. Mind you, few singers could deliver Elevation’s giggling chorus of “I’ve lost all self-control/ Been living like a mole” with the straight face Bono maintains here.īono rating: An impassioned yodel from the balcony of a four-star hotel 9: Rattle and Hum (1988) Glossy dirge Beautiful Day suggests Pride (In the Name of Love) with Simon Cowell at the mixing desk Elevation and Walk On chose bombast over depth. The album that saw U2 reclaim their place as world’s biggest rock band was also the moment at which they stopped looking forward and started strip-mining their past. 10: All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000) Their decline as songwriters arguably accelerated in earnest with their 11th album, which opens with the karate-kick single Vertigo but quickly sinks into mushy bleatings: City Of Blinding Lights and Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own are so generically U2 you could imagine them being put together by a quartet of androids wearing black stetsons (plus a beanie hat for the Edge-bot).īono rating: A strangled cry in the dark.
#PEARL JAM ALBUMS WORST TO BEST HOW TO#
But good intentions could not paper over the fact that this is an LP with lead in its boots.ġ1: How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (2004)īy going on the road with The Joshua Tree, U2 have stepped closer to the heritage circuit where old warhorses such as the Rolling Stones are put out to (very profitable) pasture. That’s a shame as Bono was wrestling with some genuinely raw themes: the death of his mother on Iris (Hold Me Close) and, on Raised by Wolves, the lack of closure suffered by the families of those killed in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. And while their devotion to The Ramones and The Clash was clearly heartfelt, the music, bloodless and overproduced, failed to measure up. It didn’t help that the record resembled a karaoke tribute to the musical heroes of their adolescence in Dublin. In an era when faux outrage is everyone’s favourite pastime how naive of U2 to think they could bung their new album on to 300 million iTunes accounts without ticking off a significant chunk of the record consuming public.
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The tedium is broken only by the “please, make it stop” dad-pop of Get On Your Boots, a paean to quickly (but safely) donning some mildly risqué footwear and stomping about in a “funky” fashion.īono rating: A pathetic whimper 12: Songs Of Innocence (2014) At once bloated and insubstantial, it bobs and weaves, adrift on endless waves of billionaire rock star ennui. Part-recorded in the Moroccan city of Fez, No Line… sounds as if it passed out in the heat and had to be dragged under a tree to recuperate. That rare U2 album where you reach the end and feel cheated by the lack of patented Bono yodelling. Is this misplaced nostalgia or is the LP truly deserving of such lionising? Hold on to your felt cowboy hats as we rank U2’s studio albums, from worst to last. And this weekend U2 bring the sold-out Joshua Tree tour to Croke Park. In the Age of Trump, politically-engaged rock is once again in vogue.
Through a fair chunk of the 1990s and 2000s, The Joshua Tree was perceived as the embodiment of everything toe-curling about U2: it was earnest, preachy and obsessed with the junkier aspects of American culture.īut lo! – as Bono might sing – the wheel has turned.