Unos, dos tres, catorce!

Alright, alright, I know. Bono can't count. Let's try to rise above that for a second and talk about the new U2 album in its entirety. I mean, we've waited four years for this thing, so it'd be kind of silly to get hung up on the first few seconds of the first single, right?

OK, so I'd be lying if I said that the brash, jumps-out-at-you-whether-you-like-it-or-not nature of "Vertigo" wasn't part of a move on U2's part to force themselves back into everyone's psyches after such a long gap between albums. Once you've been at the top and your band has been dubbed the biggest rock band in the world (which I think has happened more than a few times for U2), it's easy to want to stay there. Personally, I think it's one of those things that is better when it's a result of happenstance and not a result of highly aggressive marketing. That's not to say that their last album, All that You Can't Leave Behind, didn't have a big promotional push behind it, but the way that album worked itself into America's consciousness was partially due to some tragic accidents. For better or worse, that album started to sound prophetic to a lot of people, and it's a bit difficult to get lightning to strike twice in that department. So what do we get this time around? We get a few guys who really, really want you to buy an iPod, I guess. Kind of weird considering the great lengths they went to in order to mock commercialism in the 90's, eh?

But I told myself I wouldn't spend my entire review on the band's persona and the frenzied advertising blitz surrounding their new disc. Sorry if that seems cynical of me. Maybe I'm trying to make up for something that I'm starting to wonder if U2 has lost. Not to knock the band or anything - I still love 'em - but what I'm finding out as I keep spinning How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb is that they're coming up a bit short on the "adventure" side of things these days. Not that it's a bad album - you know how these things work; a less-than-average album by U2 standards is probably still pretty good when compared to most other bands. And I can use that frame of reference all I want to try and keep things objective, but I can't help the fact that, due to my not-so-little project of reviewing all of the band's past albums, I've got a lot of their classic stuff in my short-term memory banks at the moment. I'm almost tempted to say that I'm a bit U2'ed out right now, but no, that's not exactly it - what's good here isn't wearing itself out by any means. It's what's not so good that bugs me - in the past, I've been used to U2 having a few misfired tracks that I could make funny comments on, but here, the not-so-great stuff is just kind of... there. And I'm not used to U2 being so unassuming, you know? Especially not on an album named after something so dangerous-sounding, an album which Bono promised us was full of The Edge returning to his rocking glory days.

Yeah, HTDAAB is a tough call. I hate to judge a U2 album purely on the basis of how much it rocks, because that is by no means their only strength, but all the same, I don't want "Vertigo" and future single "All Because of You" to confuse people. This is not a full-throttle rock record. It spends a good amount of its time at medium or slower tempos, with The Edge's guitar definitely in the front and center on several tracks, but this isn't the long lost wall-to-wall rock album that they hinted at. OK, I'm over it. What I really care about is whether U2 tried anything new here, and I think that's my biggest complaint - this record feels a lot like a companion to All that You Can't Leave Behind because that's the only other album I can think of that hasn't really pushed U2's boundaries. Sure, Bono is earnest and emotional and excitable, and his buddies carry themselves capably, but at the end of the day, it kind of feels like U2 could do this in their sleep.

Have you ever heard a B-level Christian rock band trying to be U2? I hate to say it, but there are some moments on this album when it feels like U2 is trying to be that. Sure, that means that the lyrics are a lot more hopeful and less likely to stir controversy than, say, Pop, but I guess I prefer the ironic approach to the straightforward. HTDAAB sounds like it may be one of U2's most unabashedly spiritual recordings since October, and it's definitely marked with more maturity than that early record (read: less blatant preaching, more personal experience). But it ain't their best work, and I can't take it as anything other than humorous when Bono tries to paint it as a total rebirth for the band, saying that "this is our first record". Um, no, it's like your fourteenth or something. And we're not going to forget that you guys can do better than this, dangit!

Vertigo
The night is full of holes
These bullets rip the sky of ink with gold
They twinkle as the boys play rock and roll
They know that they can't dance, at least they know...
You know what? As much as I knocked this song when it first came out, I have to admit that it's kind of arm-wrestled me into liking it over the last month or so. It's just the kind of song that does that - The Edge's swooping guitar riff is a total take-no-prisoners approach, the lyrics are goofy but end up being a lot of fun, and even the random bits of Spanish end up being more curious and quotable than awkward and out of place. Add in a hefty dose of palm muting on the guitar that creates these little electric scratchy noises, and you've got a song that mixes the brute force of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" with the kitschy fun of "Discotheque" (but no weird techno stuff here). There's a certain loopy disjointedness to Bono's lyrics, which alternate between making odd observations like a girl having "Jesus round her neck" and making bold demands like "Just give me what I want and no one gets hurt!" In the end, it turns out to be quite a strong track, even if it seems to me like U2 wants to be one of those "The" bands - it's an infectious blend of the band's different personas from over the years, and by the time it ends in one last buzz as the guitar suddenly cuts out, you have to admit they've got your attention.

Miracle Drug
Beneath the noise, below the din
I hear a voice, it's whispering
In science and in medicine
"I was a stranger, You took me in..."
Bono and The Edge apparently had some tough discussions about where to place this track, which seems more like an atmospheric ballad at first before it takes off in a graceful gallop, ridding high on some fine guitar work just like "Who's Gonna Ride Your Horses" did so many years ago. Just as Bono pleaded with a suicidal individual to get up out of the funk he was in during "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out of", here he seems to be kneeling by the bedside of someone he loves who is sick, begging that person to just hold on, because he has faith that science and medicine will give them a way to go on. Bono definitely squeezes in some curious lines here - from the extremely awkward observation that "Freedom has a scent like the top of a newborn baby's head" (funny, I don't go around smelling babies' heads) to the startling realization that "I've had enough of romantic love". One could almost read it as a breakup song, but it doesn't seem quite like that would be a good explanation overall... so what is it? It's a good excuse for The Edge to lay down a great solo, that's what it is - he comes in quietly and then lets the high notes ring out fast and loud, and it just feels good, like the miracle drug is working its magic and the patient is being healed. Very strange song to place at track two, but it has its merits.

Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own
I don't need
I don't need to hear you say
That if we weren't so alike
You'd like me a whole lot more...
It took me quite a while to take a liking to this one. I'm always a bit slow with U2's ballads, and this one definitely takes the album into full ballad territory early on. The gentle tapping of Larry Mullen's drums, Adam Clayton's quiet bass undercurrent, and the solitary, ringing notes that The Edge plays make for a delicate verse in which Bono tries to work out some issues with his old man. This is a deeply personal one for Bono, who has spent quite a bit of time pining away over his late mother in songs ranging from "Tomorrow" all the way up to "Mofo", and then the last album's "Kite" seemed to be a prelude to another passing. Bono lost his father in 2001, and this song was apparently born out of the interactions between father and son before he passed on. This gives the song a delicate, dramatic balance that puts in a similar category to "One", though I don't know if this one will take as easily as that one did in terms of becoming a bona fide classic. Bono brings his falsetto voice back out (and The Edge's voice backs him up nicely) for a chorus that seems to admit not knowing how to deal with the struggle properly - "And it's you when I look in the mirror, and it's you when I don't pick up the phone, sometimes you can't make it on your own." That and the middle eight where the guitar takes off and the whole song explodes are the real hooks here - some have even gone so far as to call it a "With or Without You" moment. I wouldn't go that far, but the tension here is admirable as Bono fights with himself over whether he's ready to let daddy go.

Love and Peace or Else
Lay down, lay down your guns
All your daughters of Zion, all your Abraham sons...
Alright, so this one is a bit of an experiment. Just in case we didn't get the message when Bono begged for "Peace on Earth" the last time around, he's gonna tack on the threat "or else". Kapeesh? OK, so that term doesn't actually appear in the song (it's ironic to try to make a call for peace sound like a threat, though), but there's definitely a mildly dangerous aura to this one, since it's shrouded in some sort of funky synthesized bass that just puts a fog around the whole thing. It's like the music from Achtung Baby meets the young-guys-trying-to-save-the-world feeling of War. And in the midst of that, we get a slinky beat reminiscent of Depeche Mode or that infamous Soft Cell song "Tainted Love". (Sorry, but I just can't think of anything else when that bass line comes in with its deep "BUM, BUM".) While the song has some really sweet moments where the drums or guitars come flying out of the grey haze, it feels like the song is more restrained than it needs to be, winding up tension but never quite releasing it despite Bono's call - "We need some release, release, release!" The lyrics also aren't Bono's best, mixing October-esque references to Zion and Abraham with clichés like "Where is the love?", so while it's a lot of fun, it's no "Please" or "Sunday Bloody Sunday" in terms of protest songs.

City of Blinding Lights
I've seen you walk unafraid
I've seen you in the clothes you've made
Can you see the beauty inside of me?
What happened to the beauty I had inside of me?
Now who could blame U2 for wanting to visit The Joshua Tree one more time? Certainly not I. There's something about the grandiose nature of The Edge's jangly, chiming guitar as an atmospheric song gradually changes into a full-gallop rocker that just makes you feel happy to be alive. And this song seems to want to explain why exactly it is that the streets appear to have no name. Strangely enough, when the euphoric piano part comes in at the beginning of the song, adding color to the soft electronic hum, I would almost expect it to break into a furious techno mix at any moment. Instead we get a warm backdrop with Larry plucking away faithfully at the bass like it's 1987, a weird, echoing piano sound providing a somewhat unique (though also mildly distracting) electronic hook, and Bono's ode to a magical city which he compliments simply by saying "Oh, you look so beautiful tonight." That's the chorus, and the band teases us by only playing the line once for the first few times before jumping back into a verse, and then finally repeating it and daring us to sing along near the end. The lyrics here are some of the more interesting ones on the album, seemingly documenting the travels of an aging rock star who feels like a kid again when he steps out on stage and gets everyone cheering. This is obviously autobiographical for Bono, and despite the paparazzi and ugly photographs being taken and all that, he knows what he still wants to offer people even after all this time - "Blessings not just for the ones who kneel". Indeed, U2 has never shied away from having a core element of faith in their lyrics, and yet at almost every step, they've done so with sentiments that countless numbers of people, regardless of whether they share that faith, have been able to rally around and claim as their own. I just don't know how they still manage to get away with it!

All Because of You
I saw you in the curve of the moon
In the shadow cast across my room
You heard me in my tune
When I just heard confusion...
The "up" mood that the band has been in for the past few songs crescendos nicely here, with The Edge letting a single chord ring loudly to introduce this song, giving it a hollow, spacious feel before tearing into a bad-boy riff that almost rivals "Vertigo". If you're looking for a straight-ahead, no B.S. rocker, then I guess this will do the trick nicely, because U2 keeps it pretty basic on this one, plowing along faithfully through what turns out to be a bit of a quirky prayer. At least, that's how it reads to me - phrases like "You can make me perfect again" and "All because of you, I am" seem a little heavy for just a romantic love song. The odd lyrics are likely to be a turnoff to some people (and Bono is totally making himself an easy target when he muses "I like the sound of my own voice, I didn't give anyone else a choice" and then has the nerve to rhyme that with "tor-toise"), but they don't bug me in this instance. Truth be told, the song seems a bit predictable when posed as a possible follow-up to "Vertigo" - heck, it even ends with that same guitar-unplugging sort of effect, and I've had a harder time taking this one seriously ever since someone told me that it sounded a lot like something Audio Adrenaline would do. Yeah, I'll admit, this is kind of the easy way out for U2, but dang, it's fun.

A Man and a Woman
You can run from love
And if it's really love, it will find you
Catch you by the heel...
I'm thinking back on all the U2 songs I can remember, and to be honest with you, I can't seem to recall a single bad moment out of all the times when U2 has done the acoustic thing. Sure, The Edge is kind of the band's calling card and a more easygoing, acoustic song kind of puts him into the background, allowing Bono to lead with more of a basic strung, but the notes ring out loud and clear, the bass supplies an irresistibly chunky groove (surprising for such a light song), and the electric guitar still gets to add a glistening sheen to the chorus. It should be more than obvious that this one's a love song, though to quote Bono, "I could never take a chance of losing love to find romance". I'm not sure what his thing is about romance on this album - he doesn't seem to think very highly of it. Perhaps this has to do with a sort of evolution that takes place in a relationship - a point where you just know each other so deeply and you've been to hell and back with each other and it all just seems so much more real and eternally binding than the silly young love that it was when you first got married. There's some stellar falsetto in this one (I had all but assumed Bono had completely lost that range of his voice on the last album), and The Edge proves once again to be a welcome presence on backing vocals. Let's just say that I think this is a charmingly sweet number wrapped up in an irresistible package, and I sure hope Ali (Bono's wife) didn't take it the wrong way.

Crumbs from Your Table
I was there for you, baby, when you needed my help
Would you deny for others what you demand for yourself?
Seeing that title actually reminds me of a line from a Lifehouse song - "I bet you're tired of me waiting for the scraps to fall off of your table to the ground." There's a desperation in this song that makes it seem like a bit of a slowed down "Walk On", largely because of the comfortable pace of it and the way that the guitars ring out, augmented by bell-like keyboard sounds in just the right places. It's never been more obvious that Bono wants us to get up off of our lazy American butts and go feed the poor already, and I guess if the DATA organization needed a theme song, well, they've got one now. And I can really admire Bono's passion for that politically, but things get a bit dicey when he actually attempts to place these ideals into a song. Sorry, but I can't help but cringe a little when Bono rhymes "signs and wonders" with "something other" in the chorus and then punches me again by setting up "If I was able" so that the song's title can be the last line of the chorus. For some reason, it's just too elementary of a structure and it makes it seem like the type of song that I'd expect from much less capable artists who were influenced by U2. Bono also interjects the very awkward line "Cool down mama, cool off" twice before getting to the chorus, so it's really hard to get over the goofiness of it and enjoy the song. This is kind of the new album's version of a lesser song like "When I Look at the World", I guess.

One Step Closer
I'm on an island at a busy intersection
I can't go forward, I can't turn back
Can't see the future, it's getting away from me
I just watch the tail lights glowing...
Snooooooooooze. I really hate to say this about a U2 song, but dang, this song just does nothing for me. I mean, they've had some very soft and subtle songs like "If You Wear that Velvet Dress" or "The First Time", but those had some sort of intrigue that this one just doesn't have for me. The verses are nice enough, as Bono describes a man at a crossroads between life and death who doesn't quite know what he'll be facing on the other side. The Edge creates some nice atmosphere, but the simplistic melody just isn't enough to sustain it - it feels like the chorus goes back and forth between the same two chords, and the more Bono repeats "One step closer to knowing, to knowing, to knowing", the more it makes me want to bash my head into a wall. Honestly, this one just bugs me because so much more could have been done with it. It's like Bono got hung up upon a clever song idea, that being one step closer to death meant being one step closer to knowing what we all wish we could know for sure - but then he ruined it by favoring repetition over exposition.

Original of the Species
And you feel like no one before
You steal right under my door
And I kneel 'cause I want you some more
I want the lot of what you got
And I want nothing that you're not...
The album has clearly lost a bit of steam at this point, and this song doesn't do such a hot job of picking it back up again. The cheesy keyboard sounds in the intro threaten to turn me off almost immediately - it's just too "nice" for a song of this nature. Bono clearly wants to be ironic here - he's either describing a difficult-to-define relationship with someone else, or taking a third-person look at his own celebrity like he did with "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me", but he just seems to be recycling ideas here, no matter how you slice it. The chorus (or pre-chorus; there are kind of two different repeating bits in this one) seems to steal a thought from "So Cruel" as he states "I'll give you everything that you want, except the thing that you want", which sounded a lot cooler when it was phrased "I gave you everything you ever wanted, it wasn't what you wanted." A lot of semi-quotable lines get jam-packed into this one (the most popular among them seems to be "Some things you shouldn't get to good at, like smiling, crying, and celebrity"), but to be honest, it just seems like a contrived attempt to use up some leftover soundbites. The melody is once again quite boring, the subject matter fails to captivate me, and Bono's repeated "Do-do, do-do"s during what is supposed to be the guitar solo irritate me to no end.

Yahweh
Take this mouth so quick to criticize
Take this mouth, give it a kiss...
It's too bad that the setup for what may be U2's most blatantly religious song in the last ten years has been a bit of a train wreck, because you'd expect a song named after a supposedly unpronounceable name for God (Bono says that he hopes he got around that by singing it) to tread on some pretty holy ground. Lyrically, I can definitely see that. For those who actually paid attention to Pop, it's easy to recall "Do You Feel Loved" when Bono and The Edge (singing together) start asking, "Take these shoes, take this shirt", etc. This time around, instead of having some take from them to be used and abused, the song is a prayer, asking God to take these ordinary things and redeem them and make them useful again. It's the polar opposite to a haunting closer like "Wake Up Dead Man", but I rather like how that story arc has resolved itself, turning from a lack of faith into a sort of "help my unbelief" prayer. The song is one of the faster album closers for U2 in recent memory, though for a sped-up tempo, the song seems to merely bluster through where it could have been a tornado. The whole just thing just feels too light; the music doesn't lend any gravity to the words, and that makes the abrupt ending of "Take this heart and make it break" come a bit too suddenly and uneventfully. It doesn't help that Bono gets back into his scratchy aging-man mode when he belts out "Yah-WEH!" during the chorus. (I guess it's still a joyful noise to God, eh?) For an album that started off with a bang, this one sure ended with a long whimper.

There's still enough on How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb to make it worthwhile, I think, even to a casual U2 fan - I'd say that in the end, it comes out on par with All that You Can't Leave Behind (an album that I like but I'm not as huge of a fan of as some U2 fans who consider it to be a total reawakening for them) and it's probably a more solid listen than a hit-or-miss affair like The Unforgettable Fire. If you liked ATYCLB, or you're the typical "80's and current hits" type of U2 fan, you'll probably dig this. So don't take my disappointment as a non-recommendation. It's just that I'm starting to realize that these icons aren't aging as gracefully as I hoped they would, and they're going to need a shot in the arm in one fashion or another before they put out another album.

Let's all pray for something with a little more bite in the next election year, OK? (Because Lord knows it will probably take them that long.)

ALBUM WORTH:
Vertigo $1.50
Miracle Drug $1
Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own $1.50
Love and Peace or Else $1
City of Blinding Lights $1.50
All Because of You $1.50
A Man and a Woman $1.50
Crumbs from Your Table $.50
One Step Closer -$.50
Original of the Species -$.50
Yahweh $.50
TOTAL: $9.50

Band Members:
Bono: Lead vocals, acoustic guitar
The Edge: Electric guitar, keyboards, backing vocals
Adam Clayton: Bass
Larry Mullen, Jr.: Drums

Website: http://www.u2.com

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: Reading or Studying