U2 -- Achtung Baby
10/10
Like many U2 fans, I approached Achtung Baby with some fear. I came to love the band's early and mid-80's sound, but they seemed quite soured on it, with 1988's Rattle and Hum feeling like some sort of band immune response. Like most U2 fans, I didn't like that immune response, and the news that Achtung Baby was essentially a complete shift in sound seemed even less promising. Miraculously, Achtung Baby may be U2's greatest album.
Few bands have been able to successfully reinvent themselves, but U2 have done it several times. Achtung Baby is the first, and most successful of those reinventions. The band draw inspiration here from European textures and dance music, which, when coupled with their previous work, sounds like a recipe for embarrassment and disaster. Instead, the band somehow just absorb these elements into their pre-existent aura, making it even stronger than it was before.
All
four members continue to make contributions that are unmistakably them, but at a
higher level, and and at the service of these newfound influences. Edge's guitar
riffs still feel timeless, yet more full, malleable, limitless. Larry Mullen's
drums here are iconic, with all his rich tom-to-cymbal patterns now imbued with
industrial textures that make his work sound even more layered than before. Adam Clayton's
bass can do anything, but always does what is absolutely vital to the skeletal
structure of the song. Bono isn't a singer or even a prophet anymore--his voice
here, in a timbre that is somehow simultaneously more hurt, bitter, vulnerable
and joyful than before, coupled with the words he is singing, borders on the divine. That's all
well-and-good, but what really puts Achtung Baby into the "Best U2 album"
discussion, while leaving the other two 90's-era U2 albums behind, are the songs.
The songwriting here might just be the best of the band's career. The excellent songwriting, coupled with textures that, to me, almost define 90's alternative
rock, creates a work of art that's hard to beat.
Really, it's the textures that I want to talk about. Producers, Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, are able to get the most living, vibrant tones and space out of all of U2's work. Achtung Baby to me is a wet sidewalk in front of a graffitied wall, drying in the post-rain afternoon sun, glistening weeds sprouting up between the cracks. Again, that's a feeling, not a literal description of sound, but it's what the album evokes for me, up until its darker, dual climaxes of "Ultraviolet" and "Acrobat," which are both huge-sounding songs that lift the album up to some epic, desperate spiritual plane. These are enormously evocative works, which exist almost more metaphysically for me than concretely, and it's the same for album closer, "Love Is Blindness," which sounds more to me like a dingy, candlelit room where two lovers are confronting one another than it does an actual song. Thus is the power of this great album, which may be able to stake a claim, not only as U2's best, but as one of the greatest albums ever recorded and released by anyone. It's that good.
I love The Joshua Tree, but after listening to it and Achtung Baby close together after hearing neither for a while, Achtung Baby is a better perfect.
1991 Island
1. Zoo Station 4:36
2. Even Better Than the Real Thing 3:41
3. One 4:36
4. Until the End of the World 4:39
5. Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses 5:16
6. So Cruel 5:49
7. The Fly 4:29
8. Mysterious Ways 4:04
9. Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World 3:53
10. Ultraviolet (Light My Way) 5:31
11. Acrobat 4:30
12. Love Is Blindness 4:23
Really, it's the textures that I want to talk about. Producers, Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, are able to get the most living, vibrant tones and space out of all of U2's work. Achtung Baby to me is a wet sidewalk in front of a graffitied wall, drying in the post-rain afternoon sun, glistening weeds sprouting up between the cracks. Again, that's a feeling, not a literal description of sound, but it's what the album evokes for me, up until its darker, dual climaxes of "Ultraviolet" and "Acrobat," which are both huge-sounding songs that lift the album up to some epic, desperate spiritual plane. These are enormously evocative works, which exist almost more metaphysically for me than concretely, and it's the same for album closer, "Love Is Blindness," which sounds more to me like a dingy, candlelit room where two lovers are confronting one another than it does an actual song. Thus is the power of this great album, which may be able to stake a claim, not only as U2's best, but as one of the greatest albums ever recorded and released by anyone. It's that good.
I love The Joshua Tree, but after listening to it and Achtung Baby close together after hearing neither for a while, Achtung Baby is a better perfect.
1991 Island
1. Zoo Station 4:36
2. Even Better Than the Real Thing 3:41
3. One 4:36
4. Until the End of the World 4:39
5. Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses 5:16
6. So Cruel 5:49
7. The Fly 4:29
8. Mysterious Ways 4:04
9. Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World 3:53
10. Ultraviolet (Light My Way) 5:31
11. Acrobat 4:30
12. Love Is Blindness 4:23
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