Review Summary: word of the day: dull
In the early days U2 were a post-punk band who made music that was catchy and lifted your spirit and made your bird stand on end, i mean they were never anything brilliant but at least they were FUN. They carried on rockin right up to The Unforgettable Fire where they decided to become a much more boring band, but there was still hope. The Joshua Tree is where U2 really strived for complete and utter fuckin dullness. The album starts strong with 3 good ass U2 tracks, the first titled Xanadu starts with a nice atmospheric intro and then proceeds into a repetitive guitar riff with reverb to make it sound epic and *** and it really does work. All is well until the vocals enter. Bonios is dull as diltch, his vocals are lifeless and sleep inducing but it's not all bad, the production is spot on and the chorus is really good but other than that, neck. Next up is I Still Havent Found What I'm Looking For, which is a more upbeat track and easily one of the best, the vocals have more life and the bass line kicks your ass, a fun simple rocker. With or Without you is a hard one to judge as it's again a well made song but it just misses something, it's like they probably made it and thought *** yes we have made the best song ever and on the surface it may look that way but when you actually listen to it without any distractions it just misses the mark, again..it's ***ing dull. The next song titled Whole Lotta Love is a step down in quality, but make the most of this song as it at least has some redeeming features, the drive of the song is cool and the sliding wall of sound guitar fits really well but Bonio is once again, boring. After this track the whole album takes a completely nose dive into a never ending void of dullness. Lyrically it's the whole political blah blah shut your boat Bonio. If the quality of the first 3 tracks could be sustained throughout the entire album it would at least be an album you could leave on in the background while your changing your bed sheets, instead we get a pile of monotonous, tedious, uninteresting, dreary, unexciting, mind numbingly lifeless piece of fluff that is, The Joshua Tree.
While this isnt a bad album by any means, it lacks the energy of the bands earlier outputs, this is a dull and lifeless record which starts off ok and ends in complete and utter ***, oh and Bono is a massive cunt. I recommend this to people who like Coldplay and drive Volvos.
