As anyone who follows the band knows, U2 has always had a flair for the dramatic. Indeed, its ability to tap rock’s sense of urgency and excitement has been obvious ever since the first clarion chords of “I Will Follow” reverberated across American radio waves in 1980.
So it should come as no surprise to learn that U2’s latest album, Achtung Baby, which arrived in record stores Tuesday, also makes a magnificent noise. All of which makes Achtung Baby an exciting album. Whether it counts as a great one, however, depends upon how much you expect U2 to have to say.
This, after all, is not just any pop band. Ever since its third album, when it took on the issue of English colonialism in the stirring, anthemic “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” U2 has taken the moral high ground in its music, issuing albums that have seemed less like song collections than musical manifestoes.
Anyone looking to Achtung Baby for enlightenment, however, is in for a disappointment. Instead of grand statements and political pronouncements, the lyrics here focus on private meditations and affairs of the heart.
But anyone who tries to understand this album from its lyric sheet is missing the point, for unlike the band’s last few albums, Achtung Baby does not deal in “message music.” What this album trades on is the inarticulate power of musical emotion, and that’s something that must be heard to be understood.
It takes dozens of words, for example, for the lyrics of “Mysterious Ways” to articulate its sense of inscrutable femininity, but barely two bars for the drums and guitar to sketch the ways in which this woman moves. Likewise, three-note piano hook that sets up “So Cruel” says as much about its protagonist’s emotional disarray than anything in the verses — particularly when it’s melodic melancholy is set against a soaring chorus and insistent, hip-hop pulse.
That’s not to say the lyrics should be entirely ignored, for some are as vividly evocative as the music they adorn. “So Cruel,” for instance, finds Bono observing that his lady “wears my love — Like a see- through dress” — a metaphor as devastating as it is evocative.
Even so, Bono’s delivery often says more than the words themselves. Just listen to the way his conspiratorial whisper inflames each verse of the “The Fly,” or the way his sonorous intonation keeps the metaphors in “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” from crumbling into cliché.
But then, sound really is the bottom line here, and in many ways the most impressive thing about Achtung Baby isn’t its melodic imagination (which is considerable) or rhythmic intensity (which is irresistible), but its ingenious production (by Daniel Lanois with Brian Eno).
© The Baltimore Sun, 1991.