First, because Bono has never before sung with such emotional accuracy. Both ‘Red Hill Mining Town’ and ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ are more obviously singles than anything previously released bar ‘Pride’, but the first is perilously close to Bon Jovi in its scarf-waving melody, while the latter is destined to provoke comparisons with Rod Stewart – albeit before that singer’s career became an endless audition for Dynasty and Miami Vice.īon Jovi and Rod Stewart? To some, this will sound like I’m excusing a crude sell-out. The effect is to release rock also from its own self-imposed shackle, for, in the process of resetting their sights, U2 unravel a series of musical problems, other less resolute souls have abandoned for cliche.

There’s a host of unexpected influences here but they’ve been discriminatingly used, to release rather than imprison the band. Otherwise, The Edge’s guitar has developed its own military tendency, homing in on the legacy of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, while the group’s new commitment to songs finds both Bono and the rhythm section contending on dance-floors they never previously frequented, with complete confidence.įor, stylistically, the triumph of this album is that, like Prince, U2 prove an act can still be contemporarily commercial and also capture the higher ground. Only the opening ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’, ‘In God’s Country’ and, possibly, elements of ‘One Tree Hill’ preserve previously identifiable hallmarks. It is also the second successive album where U2 strip away the skins of their previous styles. But if that album necessarily circumvented some of the issues, The Joshua Tree returns to a frontal assault. Between the increasingly mercenary implosion of hard rock into a static vaudeville routine and the intervention of pop dance-floor values, rock has lost its lustre and mystique of genuinely redeeming passion.įrom one angle, The Unforgettable Fire can now seem a strategic retreat, to regroup, reassess the situation and gain new ammunition. It also clarifies how U2’s vocation has become the revival and renewal of rock and the recovery of its most romantic values. In time, it may be reckoned their most influential album to date.

If The Unforgettable Fire, partially through Brian Eno’s guidance, was their most European record, this, their fifth studio album, turns their sights again on the Big Country, sometimes howling off in pursuit of the ghosts that possess the American soul. With The Joshua Tree, the U2 pendulum swings back to America again.

U2 the joshua tree