In “Zoo Station,” the lead-off track of U2’s new album, Achtung Baby, Bono sings, “I’m ready/Ready for what’s next. “
He might be, but I wasn’t initially prepared for the instrumental and thematic changes in the Irish band since the 1988 release of Rattle and Hum.
But after several listens, the transformations didn’t seem so startling. The 12-song collection, which will be available in stores Tuesday, represents just another compelling chapter in the history of a group that, throughout its more than 10-year career, has striven never to become a caricature of itself.
The hard-edged music that fills Achtung Baby is miles removed from the blues and country sounds that constituted the core of The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum. One also won’t hear any of the lush, atmospheric strains that formed the foundation of The Unforgettable Fire. But some of the seeds for Achtung Baby‘s sound can be found within the volcanic rock that filled October and Boy, U2’s earliest works.
Raw, aggressive percussion clangs through “The Fly” and “Tryin’ to Throw Your Arms Around the World.” A metal-edged guitar slices through “Zoo Station.” A jazz beat, lightly tapped out on a cymbal, begins “Acrobat.” Echoed vocals lend a haunting air to “Ultra Violet (Light My Way).”
These are jarring sounds that immediately shake a listener’s complacency. But they are not nearly as jolting as the dark, bleak and sometimes vindictive lyrics.
Where once U2 exhibited a fierce social and political conscience taking up strife in Northern Ireland (“Sunday Bloody Sunday”) and Central America (“Bullet the Blue Sky”); the perils of heroin addiction (“Running to Stand Still”) Achtung Baby focuses on crises in personal relationships and a loss of spiritual faith. And where once U2 routinely expressed optimism amidst its grim subject matter, Achtung Baby holds out only minuscule hope.
The first hint that the members of U2 in addition to Bono, there’s guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton, and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. are going to ask tough questions of not only themselves but their audience comes in “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” when the echoed voice of Bono rings out: “Well my heart is where it’s always been/My head is somewhere in between.”
One can hear the ache and anguish in Bono’s vocals when in “One” he cries out to a lover: “I can’t be holding on/To what you got/When all you got is hurt.”
And when he sings, “You’re an accident/Waiting to happen/You’re a piece of glass/Left there on the beach” in “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses,” there’s no mistaking the venom in his powerful voice.
Even when the band offers a message that alternates between renewal and uncertainty, the emphasis is on the latter. In “Acrobat,” while Bono’s impassioned voice urges you to take charge and dare to dream, the speech is filled with doubts: “And I’d join the movement/If there was one I could believe in/Yeah I’d break bread and wine/If there was a church I could receive in.”
Like the musical changes, however, the thematic transformations are not nearly as unexpected as they initially seem.
When U2 emerged in the early Eighties, the band members were barely out of their teens and flush with the excitement and naivete of youth. It was natural, then, that their songs, sweeping anthems filled with bravado and occasional bombast, would reflect this.
Age and experience have taught them that there are no easy answers, passion must be tempered with reality, and relationships can suffer along the way or as Bono sings so succinctly in “Acrobat”: “In dreams begin/Responsibilities.”
Achtung Baby, with its honest emotional outpouring underscored by propulsive, passionate music, reflects the band members maturity and willingness, once again, to put their feelings and lives out there for all to see. No one could ask more of a group that looks poised to be the band of the Nineties.
© The Record, 1991.