As experimental and out there as Passengers was, there's quite a bit of U2 flavor in it, undeniably. And the argument could be made that it was an essential exercise for the band to reach the next few artistic points on the plotline of its career.
1. United Colours of Plutonium.
I always thought of this as a reincarnation of Zoo Station, retrofitted with a nuclear power source. Like Zoo Station, a traveling song, but you're being driven (a passenger!), so it's out of your control -- the future coming at you hard and fast. Sounds like the train leaving Zoo Station to me. (The faux movie in the liner notes refers to a scene on a Japanese bullet train, I believe)
2. Slug.
A foreshadowing of If You Wear That Velvet Dress -- same singing style and that magical intermeshing of Eno-esque atmospherics. Very sexy and dark. Some of the programmed beats foreshadow the sort of raindrop-on-bass-drum effect used in North and South of the River. It's also worth noting that thematically and lyrically, it resembles Do You Feel Loved.
3. Your Blue Room.
Another precursor to Velvet Dress, if not THE precursor. It has the sleepy, sexy vocal take, and with that lush carnival-organ style atmospheric. It features a classic Bono falsetto, a la Lemon, with an Eno/Edge backup vocal later on (also a la Lemon). One of the great showcases of Adam's bass playing -- easy, generous, seemingly a repeated loop that nonetheless ends up going somewhere. In one sense, it's Lemon slowed down about 10 times.
I don't think it's going out on a limb to say that without Slug and Blue Room, there would have been no Velvet Dress.
4. Always Forever Now.
I've mentioned once before how I imagine the "always" vocal line here having morphed into the chorus for the later B-side for All That You Can't Leave Behind (and we all know what that spawned). Other neat thing about this--the vocal flattening that happens halfway through is a little like the robot-voice effect used at the end of the Elevation Biffco Mix.
The percussion part on this, though electronically sampled, is so obviously modeled on Larry's signature cadence--that sort of just-off-count pattern: rolling--rolling--thump. It's on Still Haven't Found; it's on One Tree Hill; it's on Race Against Time, it's on Acrobat, it's the rapid-fire lead-up to the big beat in Beautiful Day and Miracle Drug. For the most impressive example of it, listen to U2's version of "Don't Take your Guns to Town."
5/6. Different Kind of Blue --> Beach Sequence
Someone already said how these two are such a beautiful lead-in to Miss Sarajevo, and it's so true. To hear all three in a row is to hear Miss Sarajevo differently. Not that there's any themeatic linkage between them--only sonic.
Different Kind of Blue is very much a Brian sketch, the work of a post-coital madman/genius. It opens with those lightly clanging Asian chimes--we hear those again in Ito Okashi. And for Daniel Lanois fans, a similar sound opens his "I Love You" on "Shine."
Beach Sequence, though, is littered with Edge guitar chimes and piano "ice notes" dating to Boy/October. (In the background, signature Larry drum rolls.)
7. Miss Sarajevo.
We all know this one and can recognize its U2-ness. It's worth noting that Edge's guitar distortion is EXACTLY the same he uses in part of the Pop version of Please. That sort of wimpering blues-guitar noise that he hammers on right after the first chorus. There's also a tiny bit of it in Staring at the Sun.
8. Ito Okashi.
From this point on, the songs feel less U2-ey. This song just plays with some of the atmospherics that Eno loves and used to paint songs like Streets, MLK, Trying to Throw Your Arms. The chiming/ringing here shares some of the ominous sound we here in the beginning of Please. (There's also a bass undercurrent that I swear is also used right before the climax in In the Name of the Father.)
9. One Minute Warning.
Team this one up with United Colours of Plutonium and Always Forever, and you start to see where a song like MoFo comes from. This track is as deliciously creepy as the First Night in Hell mix and Viva Davidoff (actually, more so). There's also some snippets of guitar that could have been borrowed for the Discoteque or Last Night on Earth sessions.
10. Corpse (These Chains Are Too Long)
This sounds nothing like a U2 song. Talk about creepy. It's one of the most valid comparison points between Passengers and Radiohead, though. And it's another vocal take that can be put in The Edge's short column.
11. Elvis Ate America.
Call it what you will, but this song has better structure than its older brother, "Elvis Presley and America." The lyrics are pretty bold; if you're going to use the n-word in a song, you have to know how to use it. It's an odd song but cool--the closest Bono ever comes to rapping. Numb was a template for this song, but I can also easily see the seeds of Playboy Mansion in this song.
12. Plot 180.
There's some scary little guitar dirges in this that remind me of Bullet the Blue Sky and New York. The eerie twilight-zone drone in the back could be a forebear to the one in Miami, with the crisp, tinny little beat here later being replacing by Miami's thumpy wallop. The bass and drums also aren't far off from the backing track on The Wanderer. It's like the Wanderer in a royally pissed-off mood.
13. Theme from The Swan.
This song, like Ito Okashi, is all about long sustained notes -- vibes. Here they are similar to the Phillip Glass kinds of sounds that are heavily layered and sampled to make some of the symphony-style noises in Beautiful Day and Kite.
14. Theme from Let's Go Native.
A cool, groovy song with a lot of swagger, almost like one of the experiments from the Berlin Achtung Baby sessions. I think Larry is playing that same metallic drum that he used on The Fly and So Cruel; sounds like banging on sheet metal. There's also a tambourine sound that echoes the one played in God Part II and Ultraviolet. On the guitar front, if you listen close, you hear that little searing part that Edge used later on Holy Joe. In fact, the drum track on this might have gone straight into Holy Joe. There also is some of the squawky guitar scraping that accents MoFo.
So anyway, just a few random thoughts that have occurred to me as I've listened to this brilliant album at least 50 times over the years. These ideas will sound pretty far-fetched to many, but we all hear something different.
No, I guess it's not really a U2 album per se, but there's quite a bit of U2 there--the U2 of the future as much as the U2 of the past. And to hear the band explain it, that seems to have been the point.