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The Fly
Review : The Unforgettable Fire
[SIMG]http://bonovox.interference.com/reviews/ufcoverthumb.jpg[/SIMG]
No Spoken Words, Just A Scream: The Unforgettable Fire
By Michael Griffiths
In 1984, U2 were still searching for their identity, looking beyond the post punk walls of previous albums such as Boy and War, and into something else altogether. To make a great piece of art or music, fiction or painting, a certain spark is required, something to set the fire a blaze. They obviously had this spark from the beginning, but they were looking for a more flammable energy, a way to broaden the explosion. Still in their early 20s, U2 were at a place in their lives in which they could draw from some life experience; yet, within that process, they did not want to lose the naivety that drove their passion for discovery. Bono expresses this sentiment in the song ?Indian Summer Sky:? ?You give yourself to this the longest day / You give yourself, you give it all away.? U2 were at that bend in the learning curve where they could choose to reveal their unique spark while, creatively, giving themselves to ?the longest day?, were they to take the right steps, but they did not want to rely completely on what they already knew. To do so at this stage would be to ?give it all away.? Thankfully, they did not. Instead of resting on their underdeveloped laurels by making War Part 2, they decided to change producers, and stretch their limitations and imaginations. They enlisted producer Brian Eno and his prot?g? Daniel Lanois, which turned out to be a masterstroke combination in respect to the U2 canon.
This gave rise to The Unforgettable Fire, an album named after a collection of paintings and drawings by the survivors of the Hiroshima nuclear bombing at the end of the second World War. It is possible that the idea of a nuclear winter runs through this album metaphorically, within the many images of the album, and U2 have taken it upon themselves to light a different kind fire under this metaphor. They may not be looking to split the atom, but the result is just as extraordinary. Without the spark, there would be no fire, and as further shown in ?Indian Summer Sky,? Bono expresses the need not to dissolve that spark in complacency, and to give room for the fire to spread by remaining open to possibility:
In the forest, there?s a clearing
I run there towards the light
Sky?
It?s a blue sky
To lose along the way
The Spark that set the flame
To flicker and to fade
On this the longest day
Instead of being afraid of losing their spark, they decided to look for the ?flicker? of the ?flame,? the point in which possibility teeters in and out - in and out of life and death, in and out of ?the longest day,? in and out of that place of permanence. U2 are searching for that permanence throughout this record; they are running ?towards the light,? that ?clearing,? that ?blue sky.? They want to get there before the spark flickers and fades away, before the ideas exhaust themselves as potential energy. They?re looking for that kinetic explosion, that permanent explosion. This permanence turns out to be The Unforgettable Fire itself. The album finds itself in a place where U2 are detached from their egos, a place that is slightly out of focus, reflective, at times a bit murky, often stark and chilling, yet as bright and as telling as the sunlight that shimmers in and out of its dark canvas. The conviction of, ?Wide Awake!? in ?Bad,? or, ?In the Name of Love!? in ?Pride (In the Name of Love)? exemplify the silver linings amid the wintry ravines of this album?s landscape. These and other declarations sound as though they have come from a place of reality, not a place of artifice.
At the time of the album?s recording, Bono remarked the best writing is unedited, and comes via stream of consciousness. Nowhere in the U2 catalogue is this method more successful than on The Unforgettable Fire. Here, we have U2 melding spirit and music with not only words, but with an in tune, often screaming, melody - not only musically, but within the confines of what the band manage to tap into and sustain for the first time - a surge toward the emotive and spiritual dimension that can come when music has tapped into its source. (They had tapped into such stark, metaphysical beauty prior to this record, such as the title track on October, but had not sustained it to this degree.) On The Unforgettable Fire, U2 begin to hone the art of ?discovering? a song, to allow the music to take control of the direction. By allowing possibility to take precedence, U2 achieve the reward of their risk.
Songs such as ?Bad? and ?Elvis Presley and America? rely on this faith in discovery. Both songs were written and recorded at the microphone, with Bono improvising his lyrics. By following the murky, rather creepy ?4th of July,? the seventh song, ?Bad,? washes over the album?s landscape with crystalline, sweeping guitar lines that surface out of the mud of the preceding song; it announces to the new U2 audience that the stirring, repetitive delay effects of the hit single ?Pride (In the name of Love)? was no accident - or at least, not a planned accident (?Pride? was born out of a War tour sound check in Hawaii, and came together very quickly). ?Bad? might just be the best song U2 have ever written and, whether you agree or not, no one can deny its place in the U2 canon. It can be argued that if there was one song that propelled U2 into superstardom, it was not the first single off The Joshua Tree, but the performance of ?Bad? at Live Aid in 1985. The hypnotic tap drumming, the classic Bono falsetto coming into prominence, Adam Clayton?s steady bass line a touch under the beat, the wide-angle chorus, and the passion behind it all has the ability to transfix entire stadiums anywhere in the world.
Like many big U2 songs, ?Bad? slowly moves from a quiet whisper into a scream that escalates and eventually evaporates into a collective bliss. For many, ?Bad? is the song that exemplifies everything that U2 was about in the 80s and beyond - earnest, passionate, thought provoking, fearless, vulnerable, innovative, and spiritual. The song is like a religious chant, a mystical journey through the elements of the flesh that climaxes in a rush of spiritual fervor. Perhaps one of its stanzas sum up U2 better than anything else:
If I could through myself
Set your spirit free
I?d lead your heart away
See you break, break away
Into the light
And to the day
This album may be the blue print for the silver sound of The Joshua Tree, but it is also the blue print for the thematic approach to Achtung Baby. In the 90s, Bono described the center of contradiction as being the place U2 had always wanted to be - and quoting Sam Shepard, ?It?s where the heat is, where the energy is.? This is not just a 90s revelation. In the most poetic and subtle of ways, The Unforgettable Fire deals with the causally related dichotomy between flesh and spirit, pain and salvation, hope and vulnerability, and faith and self-doubt. To ?Lead your heart away,? is to lead someone down the path of the flesh, to the inevitable ?break? of the flesh. Here, Bono is imploring us with a double-edged sword, but it?s a sword of mercy: ?See you break, break away.? There are two breaks - the break of the ?heart? (or the flesh) but also the freedom of breaking away ?into the light.?
Perhaps the true centerpiece of this album is the song, The Unforgettable Fire. The Edge brings a whole new level of play to this record, and nowhere is this more apparent than on the title track. The song starts with soft guitar picking and a quiet, needling piano. Sounds of steel brush into the scene, and a dance rhythm is introduced. The ambience is glossed over with a breathy melody. The sounds are lush and fluid. Somehow, Edge brings you into a certain physical location, a dark place with definite, finite movement. Bono introduces us to a world where lights ?shine as silver and gold? and eyes are ?dug from the night.? We see a face; we feel the steps; we?re walking through a landscape of danger and intoxication. For the first time, Bono reaches a new vulnerability with his falsetto, and we are compelled to ?Stay in this time, to stay tonight in a lie.? We are taken one step further into the emotive, and by stretching themselves, U2 have stretched us. We are brought into a night of longing, and through this longing, we feel the hope for resolve. When Bono declares, ?And if the mountain should crumble / Or disappear into the sea / Not a tear, no not I,? we are brought from the world of the finite into the infinite. Further, it not only sounds original, but it?s like a revelation! This nod to Ben E. King (who used the line in Stand by Me) does not sound at all foreign, which is a testament to Bono?s confidence as a lyricist on this album.
The Unforgettable Fire is a record of big songs, but also small sketches. It contains the previously mentioned hit single ?Pride (In the Name of Love),? which can be described as the sound of War in the backyard of The Joshua Tree. Being U2, there is a definite political feel to this song. The spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. is omnipresent in ?Pride,? as well as the closing song, ?MLK,? and perhaps to some extent the entire album. However, this album is unique not because of the big songs (there would be ample of those on the way), but because of the quiet moments, the small pieces of flickering light against the backdrop of a new U2. ?Promenade? spirals through poetry and captured moments. It?s an enchanting little love song painted with a delicacy that no one expected from a band that produced an album such as War. One testament to this album?s power, however, is despite having such profound lyricism, and a much more sophisticated approach than previous U2 albums, we still become lost in the music, itself. Despite such exhibiting poetry as ?Your earth moves beneath your own dream landscape,? and ?This bomb-blast lightening waltz,? we remain content to listen to U2 light up this winter?s night with ?No spoken words, just a scream.?
Overall Rating: 9/10
[SIMG]http://bonovox.interference.com/reviews/ufcoverthumb.jpg[/SIMG]
No Spoken Words, Just A Scream: The Unforgettable Fire
By Michael Griffiths
In 1984, U2 were still searching for their identity, looking beyond the post punk walls of previous albums such as Boy and War, and into something else altogether. To make a great piece of art or music, fiction or painting, a certain spark is required, something to set the fire a blaze. They obviously had this spark from the beginning, but they were looking for a more flammable energy, a way to broaden the explosion. Still in their early 20s, U2 were at a place in their lives in which they could draw from some life experience; yet, within that process, they did not want to lose the naivety that drove their passion for discovery. Bono expresses this sentiment in the song ?Indian Summer Sky:? ?You give yourself to this the longest day / You give yourself, you give it all away.? U2 were at that bend in the learning curve where they could choose to reveal their unique spark while, creatively, giving themselves to ?the longest day?, were they to take the right steps, but they did not want to rely completely on what they already knew. To do so at this stage would be to ?give it all away.? Thankfully, they did not. Instead of resting on their underdeveloped laurels by making War Part 2, they decided to change producers, and stretch their limitations and imaginations. They enlisted producer Brian Eno and his prot?g? Daniel Lanois, which turned out to be a masterstroke combination in respect to the U2 canon.
This gave rise to The Unforgettable Fire, an album named after a collection of paintings and drawings by the survivors of the Hiroshima nuclear bombing at the end of the second World War. It is possible that the idea of a nuclear winter runs through this album metaphorically, within the many images of the album, and U2 have taken it upon themselves to light a different kind fire under this metaphor. They may not be looking to split the atom, but the result is just as extraordinary. Without the spark, there would be no fire, and as further shown in ?Indian Summer Sky,? Bono expresses the need not to dissolve that spark in complacency, and to give room for the fire to spread by remaining open to possibility:
In the forest, there?s a clearing
I run there towards the light
Sky?
It?s a blue sky
To lose along the way
The Spark that set the flame
To flicker and to fade
On this the longest day
Instead of being afraid of losing their spark, they decided to look for the ?flicker? of the ?flame,? the point in which possibility teeters in and out - in and out of life and death, in and out of ?the longest day,? in and out of that place of permanence. U2 are searching for that permanence throughout this record; they are running ?towards the light,? that ?clearing,? that ?blue sky.? They want to get there before the spark flickers and fades away, before the ideas exhaust themselves as potential energy. They?re looking for that kinetic explosion, that permanent explosion. This permanence turns out to be The Unforgettable Fire itself. The album finds itself in a place where U2 are detached from their egos, a place that is slightly out of focus, reflective, at times a bit murky, often stark and chilling, yet as bright and as telling as the sunlight that shimmers in and out of its dark canvas. The conviction of, ?Wide Awake!? in ?Bad,? or, ?In the Name of Love!? in ?Pride (In the Name of Love)? exemplify the silver linings amid the wintry ravines of this album?s landscape. These and other declarations sound as though they have come from a place of reality, not a place of artifice.
At the time of the album?s recording, Bono remarked the best writing is unedited, and comes via stream of consciousness. Nowhere in the U2 catalogue is this method more successful than on The Unforgettable Fire. Here, we have U2 melding spirit and music with not only words, but with an in tune, often screaming, melody - not only musically, but within the confines of what the band manage to tap into and sustain for the first time - a surge toward the emotive and spiritual dimension that can come when music has tapped into its source. (They had tapped into such stark, metaphysical beauty prior to this record, such as the title track on October, but had not sustained it to this degree.) On The Unforgettable Fire, U2 begin to hone the art of ?discovering? a song, to allow the music to take control of the direction. By allowing possibility to take precedence, U2 achieve the reward of their risk.
Songs such as ?Bad? and ?Elvis Presley and America? rely on this faith in discovery. Both songs were written and recorded at the microphone, with Bono improvising his lyrics. By following the murky, rather creepy ?4th of July,? the seventh song, ?Bad,? washes over the album?s landscape with crystalline, sweeping guitar lines that surface out of the mud of the preceding song; it announces to the new U2 audience that the stirring, repetitive delay effects of the hit single ?Pride (In the name of Love)? was no accident - or at least, not a planned accident (?Pride? was born out of a War tour sound check in Hawaii, and came together very quickly). ?Bad? might just be the best song U2 have ever written and, whether you agree or not, no one can deny its place in the U2 canon. It can be argued that if there was one song that propelled U2 into superstardom, it was not the first single off The Joshua Tree, but the performance of ?Bad? at Live Aid in 1985. The hypnotic tap drumming, the classic Bono falsetto coming into prominence, Adam Clayton?s steady bass line a touch under the beat, the wide-angle chorus, and the passion behind it all has the ability to transfix entire stadiums anywhere in the world.
Like many big U2 songs, ?Bad? slowly moves from a quiet whisper into a scream that escalates and eventually evaporates into a collective bliss. For many, ?Bad? is the song that exemplifies everything that U2 was about in the 80s and beyond - earnest, passionate, thought provoking, fearless, vulnerable, innovative, and spiritual. The song is like a religious chant, a mystical journey through the elements of the flesh that climaxes in a rush of spiritual fervor. Perhaps one of its stanzas sum up U2 better than anything else:
If I could through myself
Set your spirit free
I?d lead your heart away
See you break, break away
Into the light
And to the day
This album may be the blue print for the silver sound of The Joshua Tree, but it is also the blue print for the thematic approach to Achtung Baby. In the 90s, Bono described the center of contradiction as being the place U2 had always wanted to be - and quoting Sam Shepard, ?It?s where the heat is, where the energy is.? This is not just a 90s revelation. In the most poetic and subtle of ways, The Unforgettable Fire deals with the causally related dichotomy between flesh and spirit, pain and salvation, hope and vulnerability, and faith and self-doubt. To ?Lead your heart away,? is to lead someone down the path of the flesh, to the inevitable ?break? of the flesh. Here, Bono is imploring us with a double-edged sword, but it?s a sword of mercy: ?See you break, break away.? There are two breaks - the break of the ?heart? (or the flesh) but also the freedom of breaking away ?into the light.?
Perhaps the true centerpiece of this album is the song, The Unforgettable Fire. The Edge brings a whole new level of play to this record, and nowhere is this more apparent than on the title track. The song starts with soft guitar picking and a quiet, needling piano. Sounds of steel brush into the scene, and a dance rhythm is introduced. The ambience is glossed over with a breathy melody. The sounds are lush and fluid. Somehow, Edge brings you into a certain physical location, a dark place with definite, finite movement. Bono introduces us to a world where lights ?shine as silver and gold? and eyes are ?dug from the night.? We see a face; we feel the steps; we?re walking through a landscape of danger and intoxication. For the first time, Bono reaches a new vulnerability with his falsetto, and we are compelled to ?Stay in this time, to stay tonight in a lie.? We are taken one step further into the emotive, and by stretching themselves, U2 have stretched us. We are brought into a night of longing, and through this longing, we feel the hope for resolve. When Bono declares, ?And if the mountain should crumble / Or disappear into the sea / Not a tear, no not I,? we are brought from the world of the finite into the infinite. Further, it not only sounds original, but it?s like a revelation! This nod to Ben E. King (who used the line in Stand by Me) does not sound at all foreign, which is a testament to Bono?s confidence as a lyricist on this album.
The Unforgettable Fire is a record of big songs, but also small sketches. It contains the previously mentioned hit single ?Pride (In the Name of Love),? which can be described as the sound of War in the backyard of The Joshua Tree. Being U2, there is a definite political feel to this song. The spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. is omnipresent in ?Pride,? as well as the closing song, ?MLK,? and perhaps to some extent the entire album. However, this album is unique not because of the big songs (there would be ample of those on the way), but because of the quiet moments, the small pieces of flickering light against the backdrop of a new U2. ?Promenade? spirals through poetry and captured moments. It?s an enchanting little love song painted with a delicacy that no one expected from a band that produced an album such as War. One testament to this album?s power, however, is despite having such profound lyricism, and a much more sophisticated approach than previous U2 albums, we still become lost in the music, itself. Despite such exhibiting poetry as ?Your earth moves beneath your own dream landscape,? and ?This bomb-blast lightening waltz,? we remain content to listen to U2 light up this winter?s night with ?No spoken words, just a scream.?
Overall Rating: 9/10
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