Review Summary: A cohesive theme and creative song structures carry an otherwise vanilla rock effort past its faults and into a period piece of the 1980s Cold War.
I will be brutally honest, this is my first delve into a full album by the Irish rock band, U2. I have been meaning to get into them, so I figured I would chose an album that was considered one of their best, but not their best. I did this so I can gain an appreciation for their catalogue as a whole and not have it be overshadowed by their opus.
At first the whole album seemed a bit rudimentary, drumming was pretty basic and the songs appeared to be a bunch of long, drawn-out intros to the popular songs like "New Years Day" or "Two Hearts Beat As One." However, as the album wore on the greater theme came out and the songs were rudimentary at times to set the stage for a world at war.
In 1983, virtually every continent was entrapped in an armed conflict. Customary to the time period and the contemporary post-punk sound, ethereal yet daunting guitar leads combine with the militant drumming of the album's theme. This creates a chaos-filled soundscape of the coming nuclear apocalypse. Bono's words are especially important for setting the tone and had I picked up on that earlier I would not have missed some of the allusions and intricacies in his melodies and lyrics. For example, let's look at track number 2, "Seconds" (a group effort between "The Edge" and Bono):
"Takes a second to say goodbye
Say goodbye, oh, oh, oh
It takes a second to say goodbye
Say goodbye, oh, oh, oh, say bye bye
Where you going to now
Lightning flashes across the sky
East to west, do or die
Like a thief in the night
See the world by candlelight
Fall, rise and fall, rise and
Fall, rise and fall, rise and
In an apartment on Time Square
You can assemble them anywhere
Held to ransom, hell to pay
A revolution everyday
USSR, GDR, London, New York, Peking
It's the puppets, it's the puppets
Who pull the strings, yeh"
-Songfacts.com
In typical post-punk, the ironic bouncy rhythm is undercut by tense lyrics speaking of an exceptionally dark topic (think The Cure). Choice quotes like the repeated mention of the line "It takes a second to say goodbye," the visualization of the bomb hitting, and the unpredictable nature of bombings "You can assemble then anywhere" excentuate an otherwise vanilla song into a cornerstone as opposed to a filler track. This song both lyrically and with the bassline pinnacles and builds tension extremely well. Towards the end, the song explores the horrors of women leaving their traditional role to fight via a soundbite from "Soldier Girls."
These themes and ways of orchestrating instruments continue throughout the album in ways that really encapsulate and strengthen the cohesiveness of main concept of War.
Overall, quite good. Definitely worth at least a few more full listens and possibly more. It is a grower for sure. Not bad for $3
What album by U2 should I pick up next?
