In a glorious way, this album marks the beginning of the final U2 chapter - a band at peace w/ God and itself but NOT content to rest and drift away, or (as Nigel Tufnel once said) to tread water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry. I've always hoped U2 would follow the Johnny Cash route and take it up a notch w/ age and this proves it.
This is U2's least self-conscious record since TJT. AB is a classic mind you but that album and every album since then has had an element of U2 managing its image through its rather than letting the music manage its image ... not so much w/ this record (expect for Bono mocking his activism).
Moment of Surrender blew me away. This is one the most subtle and deeply spiritual works they've every done. Not at all preachy but a deep well. Think about the scene about the ATM scene and the vision/visionary lyric and read 2 Corinthians 4:18:
"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."
And for the passerby lyric ... read the parable of the Good Samaritan. (Luke 10:25-37) One the most beautiful things in the scriptures is that Jesus' ministry was mostly done through interruptions. He didn't give a crap about appointments! We are all passersby but he (like the Good Samaritan) stopped to give the least of these the time of day. The people who were touched were not the "righteous" but the humble, weak and broken who had faith in their own moment of surrender.
U2 is so epic (and this album may be remembered as epic) because they understand that music is a bridge to the eternal and to truths that can't be put in words. It's not about them (in spite of Bono's ego) but about something beyond them. Their music has a scent of something much more beyond what we see ... Magnificent!
