U2 has been crowned the biggest band in the world so many times that, at least conceptually, they've finally managed to transcend themselves, ditching their earthly digs and assuming cartoonish proportions. And that might be why the four silhouettes currently twitching across America's TV screens, jerkily promoting U2-branded iPods over big, neon expanses, seem so eerily apropos: the flesh and blood members of U2 have been reduced to signifiers, mock-ups, representatives. They are bigger than their band.
Produced by arena-guru Steve Lillywhite (with help from longtime twiddlers Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno, and Flood), U2's 11th LP, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, is brash, grungy, and loud-- everything R.E.M. tried (and failed) to be on Monster, and everything U2 opted out of being on 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind. Still, Atomic Bomb is not an especially surprising record. It's a classic mix of colossal ballads and jerky rockers-- part-The Unforgettable Fire, part-Achtung Baby. Theoretically, Atomic Bomb weds classic U2 (echoing guitars, big sound, soaring vocals) with nu-U2 (experimental tweaks, electronic flourishes) but, high aspirations aside, the only marriage the record ultimately achieves is the union of good U2 and bad U2. So take a deep breath and prepare for a tiny handful of outstanding tracks and a whole mess of schmaltzy filler.
U2 may be a staunchly democratic machine (ask Eno), but Bono is still singularly responsible for propelling U2-as-uber-group forward, leering out from behind oversized yellow goggles, crusading righteously to reduce Third World debt, campaigning against AIDS, spitting post-Beat induction speeches from Jann Wenner's Hall of Fame podium, bobbing stupidly for Apple, talking and talking and talking about himself. Publicly, U2 are overblown and decadent, sporting silly, abstract monikers and booking colossal stadium tours, calling presidents, wearing sunglasses in the dark, anchoring the Super Bowl, pushing products. Bono is 43 years old, boasts remarkable sway both inside and outside the pop culture sphere, and fronts one of the most universally recognizable rock bands of all time: He is a neo-superstar-- global, important, impossibly entertaining, and forever tiptoeing the line between wholly extraordinary and idiotically self-obsessed.
Despite a deliberately leading album title-- and one lone, overtly suggestive song title ("Love and Peace Or Else")-- How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb is a curiously apolitical record, more about love and loyalty (and the 2001 death of Bono's father) than impending global doom. The decision to sidestep bold politicking and instead highlight feelings-and-guitars is a particularly compelling one right now, given the super-charged months preceding the record's release (and the melange of global conflicts now escalating to new levels of absurdity). Listeners are left wondering if Bono's elbows-deep international activism has somehow turned him off to the (comparably nebulous) effort of writing protest songs-- has all the dirt under his fingernails made the act of emoting into a microphone seem a little less urgent? "Saving the world is now a daily chore," Bono joked to The New York Times-- even in jest, it's a completely ridiculous thing to say. And yet?
Deliberately or not, Bono-as-bespectacled-celebrity-crusader seeps into nearly everything U2 does, sometimes to significant aesthetic effect: When Bono starts cawing urgently about a place called "Vertigo", declaring it "everything I wish I didn't know," it's possible that he's talking about girls or his father or his band-- or Bono might be squealing about something far worse, something awful, something most of us are lucky enough to have never witnessed. The problem is that it's extraordinarily difficult to ever really know exactly what Bono is talking about. Almost without exception, Bono yowls vague, cliched observations, his sentiments always awkwardly bombastic or hopelessly maudlin (check "Miracle Drug," where we are invited to ponder how "Freedom has a scent/ Like the top of a newborn baby's head," or "A Man and A Woman", where we contemplate "the mysterious distance between a man and a woman," or even just repeated-- seriously!-- "Where is the love?" demands.)
Loads of listeners have already noted that opener "Vertigo" bears an odd resemblance to The Supremes' gorgeously desperate "You Keep Me Hanging On", except "Vertigo" is framed by a classic punk shout-down where-- get this!-- Bono's totally singing in Spanish! Wait, he said catorce! It's a classic U2 moment: worldly, frantic, irritatingly deliberate. But when the Edge slams into his guitar, hollering a smirky "Hola!" to Bono's quasi-confrontational "Hello, hello!" it's awfully easy to forgive: "Vertigo" is hopelessly appealing, somehow growing less stupid and more compelling with each listen.
"Vertigo" is followed by a pair of swirly half-ballads, the plodding, overblown "Miracle Drug" and the super-sappy "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own", before we're mercifully handed "Love and Peace Or Else", a snarly, throbbing bit of solace. "Love and Peace" opens with a platter of ominous noise, shaky guitar grumbles rubbing up against high-pitched whines. Drums rumble, and Bono lodges his best semi-seductive demand: "Lay down, lay down." "Love and Peace" is chased by the equally exhilarating "City of Blinding Lights", an earnest and galactic fight song, and the sort of track that's best enjoyed in cars and airplanes, simply because it encites so much giddy movement. But "City of Blinding Lights" is the record's climax, and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb begins its gnawing descent almost immediately, culminating with disastrous closer "Yahweh", a whiny, monotonous mess that's easily one of the worst songs U2 have ever recorded.
Maybe the biggest problem with Atomic Bomb is just that it sounds so much like U2, and their semi-absurd, totally unparalleled ubiquity has left all of us just a tiny bit tired of listening to things that sound like U2. This isn't completely their fault-- they tried to change (see the questionable Zooropa or the disastrous Pop), and we didn't like that, either. Bono has talked publicly about U2's longevity and quasi-diversity, crediting their shape-shifting to his band's unbreakable internal bonds-- U2 can afford to mess around, because the "spirit" of the band is so strong, so infinitely recognizable. But maybe U2's immortality is also their biggest curse-- and now they're forced to wallow in superstardom, forever perpetuating their own colossal myth.
