By now you’ve probably heard the best rock album of 1991, U2’s Achtung Baby (Island). So you know how fully the band has reinvigorated itself (an absolute necessity after Rattle and Ho-Hum) by combining its melodic sheen with the rhythmic intensity of hip-hop and the sonic creativity of industrial music (sqawk-rock mixmaster Flood has joined producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois). This collection of love songs — numbers that leap open-armed into the rolling waves of experience — is the album that all other major new releases must be gauged against. It’s simply that strong.
The opening “Zoo Station” is an astonishing departure for U2: Bono’s trademark voice ground into an unrecognizable growl, an intro that bleeds from a metronome tick into a broadsword of screaming guitar that’s supplanted by a bombfall of a beat. And like most of the album, it’s disarmingly positive, warmly embracing whatever life brings. The songs build a tunnel illuminated by peals of otherworldly guitar, enervated by blasts of percussive energy, occasionally opening on an oasis if warm, calm sound (like “One,” which plays with the cinematic efficiency of Roxy Music).
Through broken-heartedness, domestic comfort, and evangelical zeal the songs twist and crawl. But at their most upbeat, the lyrics still leave room for the sort of doubts and insecurities that riddle us even in our happiest moments. “Love Is Blindness” is the final cut, and Achtung Baby‘s summation. “Love is clockwork/ And cold steel,” Bono sings. Love, in short, is everywhere and everything, waiting to be found — and we needn’t search. Though Achtung Baby, so fully formed it’s an obvious work of love, offers some alluring guideposts.
© Pulse!, 1991. All Rights Reserved.