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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
U2 spent the '90s making rebellious music that strayed into weirdness and irony, but a new compilation sticks to the band's trademark earnestness.
Nov 19, 2002 | Underneath U2's patriotic flag-waving and global peacemaking, at heart the four lads still want to be rebellious Irish teenagers. What other explanation is there for what happened to them during the 1990s? During the '80s the band was scrappy and brash, steadfastly ignoring the plastic passion of new wave with politically charged idealism and tilting activism. After conquering most of the free world with "The Joshua Tree" in 1987, the band members fit comfortably into their roles as straight-faced rockers, saving humanity with soaring anthems and bleeding hearts on their sleeves.
Then, in their version of getting a tattoo, staying out all night drinking cheap beer and skipping out of gym class for a smoke, the foursome spent the next decade running away from a reputation. No longer the polite young men you could proudly take home to Mom, their very public descent into irony and weirdness was fascinating to watch. The band released the electro-buzzed "Achtung Baby" (1991) and Bono transmogrified into a debauched devil on the Zoo TV tour. On "Zooropa" (1993) the Edge mumbled the cold "Numb" to a keyboard line borrowed from proto-new wave band the Normals' "Warm Leatherette." And then there was the Popmart extravaganza, a Day-Glo train wreck of synthesizers, larger-than-life Golden Arches and a mechanized lemon -- a sort of experiential version of the kaleidoscopic and commercially sour "Pop" (1997). After the long-haired, doe-eyed earnestness and genuine faith of '80s warhorses like "With or Without You" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday," U2's winking excess and ironic, "Is this a joke?" sensibility were difficult to swallow.
All said, U2's "The Best of 1990-2000" should be less cohesive and a lot harder to digest than its predecessor, "The Best of 1980-1990." The techno-fried tracks on a bonus 13-song disc of B-sides that was packaged with "1990-2000" during the first week of release are certainly patchier. However, the 16 songs included on the single-disc A-sides compilation are surprisingly much tamer than the four full-length albums from which they are plucked. Call it revisionist history or selective remembering, but "1990-2000" has obviously been processed and manipulated through a massive earnestness filter. In a way, this collection exposes an all-new irony: That for all their slick-sell posturing, U2 was pretty serious all along. Or at least that's the intended message.
Instead of "Zooropa's" trance-inducing title track or the hectic urban chaos of "Lemon," we hear the dreamy, tick-tock lullaby of "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" and a delicate, almost a cappella "The First Time." "Pop" is similarly pruned: The new mix of "Gone" is closer to the band's loose live version, minimizing squealing synths in favor of sparse piano chords and Adam Clayton's bass. "Staring at the Sun," often reworked into an acoustic tune in concert, emphasizes Larry Mullen Jr.'s drums and random dapples of guitar and synth high in its own remix, underscoring its desolate atmosphere. While first-rate compositions, both give little hint of "Pop's" messy bursts of mechanical fireworks.
Of course, some of U2's bizarre artifacts just can't be swept under the rug. The new version of "Pop's" glittery all-night party "Discotheque" -- heavier on the funk -- and a slightly tweaked remix of "Numb" both betray their automaton origins. And you wouldn't want to change a few relics, such as "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me," their excellent "Batman Forever" soundtrack contribution that oozes lust, pulsing with a jagged riff.
As a whole, "1990-2000" accurately delivers the essence of "Achtung Baby," reproducing its vulnerable declarations of love, erotic dance-floor artifice and doses of decadent seduction. All of that is included here in three songs: the ballad "One," the apocalyptic come-on "Until the End of the World" and the hypersexual "Even Better Than the Real Thing." The goal with the rest of the collection seems to be to amass something as undated, as unembarrassing even, as "Achtung" as a whole.
This likely explains why all three songs from "Pop" appear remixed. Stripped away to chords and lyrics, "Pop" is quite possibly one of U2's most gut-wrenching albums; its cheesy electronics fail to hide the anguish of "Wake Up Dead Man," "Please" and "Mofo." But today it also seems like the musical equivalent of U2's goth phase, the band awkwardly trying out keyboards and vocal distortion like a teenager messing with fishnets, dyed black hair and the Sisters of Mercy.
