Devilishly Good

U2 The Best of 1990-2000 Universal

U2 have successfully, to use Bono’s rather gauche phrase, re-applied for their old jobs. Right now, they’re kings of the world again, so it’s easy to forget just what a tricky decade the last one was for the most successful non-American rock band since Led Zeppelin. Effectively, they have put themselves back in their own box and this dreadfully sequenced 17-track album (plus another one of the B-sides for a reason) explains why.

They began the decade reeling from the harshly maligned Rattle and Hum and ready to experiment like latter-day Alexander Flemings. Their first ’90s single, the stodgy, unfocused “The Fly,” should have served notice things might soon go awry, but it was overshadowed by Achtung Baby and, shortly afterwards, Zooropa. These albums showed that U2 could have some of their cake and eat it. They could take their chances and take their audience along with them.

Achtung Baby‘s “Mysterious Ways,” “One” and “Even Better Than the Real Thing” are the core of this record and the core of U2’s decade. They’re still marvellous, of course.

Yet, on the otherwise excellent Zooropa, “Numb” showed they could still misfire. Even a radical remix here can’t hide the essential fact that it’s a pig of a song. However, as they seemed finally to acknowledge in last month’s Q, Pop need not have been a step too far: it just wasn’t very good. Predictably, “Discotheque,” “Gone” and “Staring at the Sun”‘s remixes fail to overcome the same problem as “Numb”‘s. Significantly, the tampering stops right there.

All That You Can’t Leave Behind re-invented U2 as the old U2. How they really feel about this remains to be seen, but right now they seem grateful. As well they might: they were lucky not to have been brought down by the whole Pop Farrago.

There are two new tracks. Complex, sprawling and fascinating, “Electrical Storm” swells with every hearing. Better still and from Martin Scorsese’s The Gangs of New York is “The Hands That Built America,” a successor of “One” and, intriguingly, Passenger’s “Miss Sarajevo. If the film is as beautiful as this then Scorsese, like U2, is at the peak of his game once more.

Release date: 4th November, 2002

© Q Magazine, 2002.