NME Review
Listen: a lot of you have already made your minds up about this one because you think the singer is a tosser. You could even be right, but think about how it happened. Remember, this was the ‘80s, the breeding ground for a lifetime of rock extravangances but also a younger, more innocent musical age when four snotty-nosed indie kids from Ireland could start riding a wave of success that would never, ever stop. Bone became todays superstar politician slowly and publicly, in a way that couldn’t happen any more in a fragmented modern rock world. Only in that era could an Irish kid from an indie band become so famous that he thought going over to the Joshua Tree to “discover his roots” was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Be a dickhead, in other words. But a dickhead with his wits about him; and, after the awful live-album-cum-rockumentary-soundtrack “Rattle & Hum”, one who realised things had gone too far.
The U2 story really got interesting with “Achtung Baby” when, determined to change absolutely everything, they decamped to the former East Berlin, threw out the chest-beating, embraced electonica and made the album of their lives. But the shock tactics hid a glowing maturity. During this time, The Edge’s marriage was breaking up; and when he tried to explain to Bono how he felt, the singer came back with “One” and revealed himself to be far, far better at mapping the human heart than he ever was at writing songs about Martin Luther King (remember this, it will be important later). Replenished, he took a satirical sledgehammer to everything he had become, creating his Macphisto alter=ego for the Zoo TV tour – a devil in a gold lame and a celebrity monster so arrogant he would try to call up world leaders from the stage, usually hitting the wall at a baffled receptionist. He came back from being a pompous dickhead to the kind of international megastar you’d want to have a pint with.
Before long, and around the time he became involved in the Jubilee 2000 coalition to write off the crippling debt othat the third world owes the First, he found that Presidents really would take his calls. The Edge was mightily pissed off that Bono agreed to meet George W Bush two years ago but Bono bit his lip, shook the Presidents hand and shamed $5 billion of aid out of him, earning him the White House nickname of “The Pest” in the process. Bono the lobbyist for The Forces Of Good has now become such an influential figure that in an interview with former labour spin doctor Alistair Campbell on Five the other week, he refused to be drawn on who he would choose between Bush and Kerry because it would compromise his influence. Whatever you think of his motives, you can’t deny the magnitude of the work he’s doing; he’s certainly the only rock star in the running for a Nobel Prize. The upshot is that the worlds biggest rock star now has a second job that’s even more important then his first. But, as he told Campbell, “celebrity is currency and I want to spend mine well”. He can only help save the world as long as he remains the worlds biggest rock star. Or, put another way, for a band who’ve always strived to be important, U2 have found themselves in a position where lives depend on how good their next album is.
We should say straight away that “How to dismantle an atomic bomb” is certainly not a political record. The title’s a red herring. When Bono wrote “One”, he killed off the person that wrote “Sunday Bloody Sunday” or “Pride” or “New Years Day” forever. Instead “… Bomb” is a deeply confessional collection of songs taking you inside the battered soul of the puppetmaster. It’s the oldest trick in the book, but Bono’s genius is that his inner monologue is so huge and heroic that it matches the scale of the music. And, even more so than on “All That You Can’t Leave Behind”, the music is enormous.
It starts with an action sequence, the incendiary single “Vertigo” finding Bono looking down from his plinth and panicking about “everything I wish I didn’t know”, casting himself as a gladiator, fighting a battle he’s no longer got any choice in. It puts you right inside his head so that when it bottoms out into the waterfalls of “Miracle Drug” you’re treated to a boy’s-eye view of his quest for salvation. The root of the album, Bono says, is in his troubled relationship with his father, who died in 2001. The atomic bomb of the title is one in his head, and, lyrically, this is a 45-year old orphan’s search for approval.
By letting you in so close he’s showing you Bono at his most Bono, and what makes “…Bomb” so good musically is that its also U2 at their most U2. And you forget, with them being so big, just you good they are. Bono, an old-fashioned superstar closer to Sinatra than Johnny Borrell; Edge, cast as the last guitar hero; Clayton and Larry, always one of rock’s most propulsive rhythm sections, sounding like they’re strapped with booster rockets. It manages to distill the bands history (more than anything, it sounds like a beefed-up “The Unforgettable Fire”) without ever repeating it. Like Jane’s Addiction’s “Strays” but without the Hollywood pantomime, it’s the sound of a band loaded on power-ups, strapped in body armour and sprinkled with psychedelia.
Next up is the gorgeous “sometimes you can’t make it on your own”, the reliable power ballad which anchors every great U2 album (think; Stay/Staring at the Sun/Stuck in a Moment). Love and Peace or Else briefly marks a return to God mode but its so glam, camp and silly that it can only be a piss-take. Things lose gas briefly on “City of Blinding Lights” which is so full of bluster and beautiful layers that it forgets to go anywhere much. “All Because of You” could be the garage single to make The Hives want to hang up their suits while “A Man and A Woman” dips, partly because its just a bit too Marks & Spencer, but mainly because it sets up the next truly magnificent moment “Crumbs from your table”. It’s the albums centrepiece and people who don’t like U2 will hate it for the very same reasons that it stands out. Ostensibly a song about the Aids crisis, it’s impossible not to read a personal struggle into Bono’s casting of himself as an inferior son searching for acceptance.
After that, they can only come in to land, with “One Step Closer” sounding like anything from the back end of “Achtung Baby” and “Original of the species” – a straightforward “All that you can’t leave behind”-era love song that does its job with a grace which is the opposite of “Vertigo”, but Justas vital as part of a being U2-at-their-most-U2. By the end, having exhumed pretty much everything else, Bono’s drifted down from vertigo to ground level (in the desert probably), left only to sing to God or, in the Hebrew translation “Yahweh” – a heavy-handed plea for personal salvation from the only place left: “Take these shoes and make them fit… take these hands, don’t make a fist”. With God refusing to answer, all that’s left is the same uncertainty “Vertigo” began with. Bono stitches up guts as easily as he opened them up at the start and – guess what! – he wasn’t so different from you in the first place. Just a snotty kid from an indie band who found himself in an extraordinary situation. And ready to get on with it.
And if you live in the UK or America, thats it. Because Bono has left a little ticking bomb of his own. Japanese versions of the album will end with "Fast Cars", a dazzling song, albeit a world away from anything else here and the source of the atomic bomb line. Its hypnotic, built around whirling African rhythms: denying the western world a song this good can only be a subtle fuck-you. He wont be drawn on who he'd vote for, but Bono's damned if hes giving us a song thats even influenced by the cultures we're allowing to die. Its the only polictal gesture on the entire album but its a devastating one.
How can Bono keep his second job safe? By staying the best in the business at his first one. This is a classic U2 album, for sure, but also a breathtakingly modern, heavy fucker. And thanks to The Killers, The Walkmen and The Stills making them the influence du jour, one that finally makes them cool again. By avoiding politics completely, “How to dismantle an atomic bomb” is a political masterstroke. Preposterous, yes; but happily for the future of humanity, also brilliant.
9/10
My fingers hurt...
Liking those positive reviews
