U2 -- The Joshua Tree
10/10
It took me long enough to work up the nerve to review my favorite band's catalogue. I think the pinnacle of my yips came from the thought of reviewing The Joshua Tree, an album that's, frankly, been talked about enough. Before U2 released The Joshua Tree, they were a well-known band, but afterward, they become the MOST well-known band. This is the album that, for better or worse, launched U2's career into the stratosphere. It's the album that both got the band's music on millions of new shelves, and caused millions of others to think of them as pretentious and overly serious.
Maybe U2 were a little
pretentious.
Before recording The Joshua Tree, U2 frontman, Bono, seemed to be jet-setting to
underprivileged areas all around the world, then returning furious that so many lived horribly so that some could live well. He finds a way to inject that fury
throughout the Joshua Tree in an understated way, and yet, this is the album
that allowed each band member to purchase numerous multi-million dollar houses
around the world. The Joshua Tree contains multitudes.
Most people know The Joshua Tree's first three songs, as the album is front-loaded with singles. Opener, "Where the Streets Have No Name," jangles and explodes with hope-filled beauty, and might just be the best song ever, until it is immediately followed by the searching, contradictory, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" holds the title of "greatest song" for about zero seconds, as it is immediately followed by newest greatest song ever, and my favorite U2 song, "With or Without You." All three of these songs have a religious touch, "Where the Streets Have No Name" hinting at heaven, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" hinting that there is no end to the religious process, and "With or Without You" seeming to draw a painful, yet inescapable connection between humanity and God, humanity and humanity, a person and themselves. And these are just the first three songs.
Through these three tracks, the band employ what is often thought of as their signature sound. The Edge plays chiming arpeggios that seem to hint at eternity, Bono waxes poetic, vocals dynamically shifting to intense moments of catharsis as he sings about matters that could be both spiritual and physical, as the rhythm section of bassist, Adam Clayton, and drummer, Larry Mullen, Jr., hold down the fort. If you keep listening past these three huge hits, though, it becomes extremely apparent that The Joshua Tree is both highly experimental and weird.
Most people know The Joshua Tree's first three songs, as the album is front-loaded with singles. Opener, "Where the Streets Have No Name," jangles and explodes with hope-filled beauty, and might just be the best song ever, until it is immediately followed by the searching, contradictory, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" holds the title of "greatest song" for about zero seconds, as it is immediately followed by newest greatest song ever, and my favorite U2 song, "With or Without You." All three of these songs have a religious touch, "Where the Streets Have No Name" hinting at heaven, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" hinting that there is no end to the religious process, and "With or Without You" seeming to draw a painful, yet inescapable connection between humanity and God, humanity and humanity, a person and themselves. And these are just the first three songs.
Through these three tracks, the band employ what is often thought of as their signature sound. The Edge plays chiming arpeggios that seem to hint at eternity, Bono waxes poetic, vocals dynamically shifting to intense moments of catharsis as he sings about matters that could be both spiritual and physical, as the rhythm section of bassist, Adam Clayton, and drummer, Larry Mullen, Jr., hold down the fort. If you keep listening past these three huge hits, though, it becomes extremely apparent that The Joshua Tree is both highly experimental and weird.
"Bullet the Blue Sky" explodes with a righteous anger,
the most heavy political salvo these Irishman have ever fired at their sometimes
adopted home of America. The song
was later covered (I
think quite well) on a platinum selling album by a metal band, and they barely
had to ramp up the heaviness. As soon as "Bullet the Blue Sky"'s barrage of sound ends, in comes the
gentle, country-pluck intro of "Running to Stand Still" which builds and builds
to an enormous release, with Bono belting out in his best falsetto right at the song's midpoint. "Running to Stand Still" eventually goes out on a harmonica, before the Americana
stomp of "Red Hill Mining Town" begins. "Red Hill Mining Town" was originally
slated to be one of the album's lead singles by someone with a horrible idea.
Lucky for the band, this idea got nixed, as, while "Red Hill Mining Town" works wonderfully as The
Joshua Tree's strange middle, it's not so much a song calculated to appeal to
the masses.
"In God's Country" redirects The Joshua Tree in musically the most stereotypically U2 way possible (it almost sounds like what a computer program injected with all of U2's work would then create), but is so lyrically savage in regard to its titled topic, it would never fly over much of America's airwaves. They tried to release it as a single anyway. Then, we've got the blues stomp of...*ugh, it looks like I'm track-by-tracking this*...then we've got the blues stomp of "Trip Through Your Wires," a pleasant, upbeat love song. As that ends, its's time for the album's darker final quadrant.
First comes "One Tree Hill," which Bono thought up while at a funeral. The song is almost upbeat, but there's an uncertainty hanging overhead, and a feeling of death. This builds to the album's overall climax, "Exit" a building and explosively metallic track, with a menacing bassline underneath, lyrically focusing on a psychotic killer. This album really does contain multitudes. You get all sides of America, all sides of love.
U2 were into something here, this both their serrendipitous moment and their near doom. They acheived worldwide stardom and adoration for The Joshua Tree, which sold over 25 million copies, and came at exactly the right moment in human history. However, they've also had to find a way to exist after it, and to their great credit, they somehow have. Album closer, "Mothers of the Disappeared" feels like a cleansing moving on, another political statement that feels personal. This period of U2's career isn't quite done. But it is about to come to a screeching halt.
1987 Island
1. Where the Streets Have No Name 5:38
2. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For 4:38
3. With or Without You 4:56
4. Bullet the Blue Sky 4:32
5. Running to Stand Still 4:18
6. Red Hill Mining Town 4:54
7. In God's Country 2:57
8. Trip Through Your Wires 3:33
9. One Tree Hill 5:23
10. Exit 4:13
11. Mothers of the Disappeared 5:12
"In God's Country" redirects The Joshua Tree in musically the most stereotypically U2 way possible (it almost sounds like what a computer program injected with all of U2's work would then create), but is so lyrically savage in regard to its titled topic, it would never fly over much of America's airwaves. They tried to release it as a single anyway. Then, we've got the blues stomp of...*ugh, it looks like I'm track-by-tracking this*...then we've got the blues stomp of "Trip Through Your Wires," a pleasant, upbeat love song. As that ends, its's time for the album's darker final quadrant.
First comes "One Tree Hill," which Bono thought up while at a funeral. The song is almost upbeat, but there's an uncertainty hanging overhead, and a feeling of death. This builds to the album's overall climax, "Exit" a building and explosively metallic track, with a menacing bassline underneath, lyrically focusing on a psychotic killer. This album really does contain multitudes. You get all sides of America, all sides of love.
U2 were into something here, this both their serrendipitous moment and their near doom. They acheived worldwide stardom and adoration for The Joshua Tree, which sold over 25 million copies, and came at exactly the right moment in human history. However, they've also had to find a way to exist after it, and to their great credit, they somehow have. Album closer, "Mothers of the Disappeared" feels like a cleansing moving on, another political statement that feels personal. This period of U2's career isn't quite done. But it is about to come to a screeching halt.
1987 Island
1. Where the Streets Have No Name 5:38
2. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For 4:38
3. With or Without You 4:56
4. Bullet the Blue Sky 4:32
5. Running to Stand Still 4:18
6. Red Hill Mining Town 4:54
7. In God's Country 2:57
8. Trip Through Your Wires 3:33
9. One Tree Hill 5:23
10. Exit 4:13
11. Mothers of the Disappeared 5:12
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