Artist: U2
Album: Achtung Baby (1991)
It may surprise one or two people on here, but I like quite a few albums by U2. That is to say I like U2 up to and including Zooropa (1993). Since then they've become as dull and predictable as The Rolling Stones. Today they embody everything that ... Read review
Achtung Baby - U2
Even though it was greeted at the time as U2's reinvention as a dance/rock post-modern ... more
revue, with a bit of post-Wall Berlin thrown in for luck, distance now shows that Achtung Baby is in fact a suite of extraordinarily perceptive and tender songs on t...
Achtung Baby - U2
Even though it was greeted at the time as U2's reinvention as a dance/rock post-modern ... more
revue, with a bit of post-Wall Berlin thrown in for luck, distance now shows thatAchtung Babyis in fact a suite of extraordinarily perceptive and tender songs on the...
palette than before and with a newfound smattering of irony, the four-piece dramatically overhauled their traditional approach to songwriting. The so-called 'band of the 80s' were taking song risks - and every single one paid off.U2 Achtung Baby: A Classic Album Under Review offers a previously unobtainable level of insight into the band during the recording of their most dynamic and well respected album. Via the use of live footage, long forgotten videos and the review, criticism and insight of a panel of highly opinionated experts, this package delivers the finest documentary film yet to emerge on Dublin's favourite sons.Features include:- Live and studio performances from the Achtung era, reassessed by a panel of revered experts.- Obscure footage and unseen photographs.- Review, comment and criticism from: U2 documentary maker and broadcaster, Stuart Bailie; author of U2 And Philosophy, Mark Wrathall; music expert, author and revered radio DJ, Paul Gambaccini; ex-Mojo editor, Mat Snow; Uncut magazine's contributing editor, Nigel Williamson; The Guardian and Time Out's Andrew Muller and others.- Footage of and comment on U2's musical influences from this most pivotal point in their extensive career.
A review by andystrong on Achtung Baby - U2 December 8th, 2003
Author's product rating:
Originality
Definitely a cut above the rest
Lyrics
Thought-provoking
Quality and consistency of tracks
A couple of weak links
How does it compare to the artist's other releases
Outstanding
Value for Money
Advantages:
Personal Lyrics, Quality Musicianship
Disadvantages:
Tails Off Slightly TowardsThe End
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
Artist: U2 Album: Achtung Baby (1991)
It may surprise one or two people on here, but I like quite a few albums by U2. That is to say I like U2 up to and including Zooropa (1993). Since then they've become as dull and predictable as The Rolling Stones. Today they embody everything that is musically wrong about rock music, yet twelve years ago they released a cutting edge album that caught many a listener on the hop.
After the indulgent, yet in parts brilliant, "Rattle And Hum", U2 disappeared for three years. They holed themselves up in Germany and talked about "redefining the sound of the band." Achtung Baby is in every sense a brave record. Larry Mullen's drumming bows respectfully to hip-hop/baggy sounds without sounding over the top. Adam Clayton's basses are slick and give a brooding, late-night feel to the slower tracks. Most crucially The Edge's guitars are captivating. Whether it's the wall of sound guitars of "Zoo Station", the angular shapes he makes on "...End Of The World" or the stunningly innovative lead guitar on "The Fly" - The Edge is practically all over this record.
Bono himself isn't typical Bono. Vocally he does his usual thing, although at times takes his voice down a notch, to provide a darker feel for a darker, more personal album. Lyrically the campaigning, self-congratulatory Bono of the early-mid 1980s is replaced by a more introspective and thoughtful writer. Ultimately the band and Bono in particular, come across as vulnerable, yet more accessible and refreshing at the same time.
The tea-cup tapping meets pneumatic drill introduction to "Zoo Station" sounds a million miles away from traditional U2. An awkward, fuzzy guitar and a distorted drum pattern clunk away whilst some choo choo train noises build momentum. After forty seconds of strangeness U2 suddenly announce themselves with a trademark Edge guitarline. The verse starts with a hugely distorted (and at times tuneless) vocal from Mr Vox. By the time the shimmery guitars present the chorus most listeners will have fallen into two camps;
Camp One - "This is crap. At least their old stuff was radio friendly, if at times it was mildly annoying."
Camp Two - "This is brilliant. It is weird but there's something about it."
Lyrically it isn't vintage. Bono sings about being "ready for the laughing gas" and being "ready for the shuffle, ready for the deal...ready to let go of the steering wheel." More worryingly he comes up with the following abstract wisdom;
"Time is a train Makes the future the past Leaves you standing in the station Your face pressed up against the glass"
Nonetheless, it is still strangely compelling. When I first got this album it was, for a time, my favourite track. Following on is the polished "Even Better Than The Real Thing", which has never done a huge amount for me, but is nonetheless a well written and well produced track, with some fine guitar playing and splendid production. Next comes the album's centre-piece (in many senses) - the majestic ballad "One."
Vocally Bono has never given a stronger performance on record than on "One" (with the possible exception of "With Or Without You"); he is composed, yet sounds genuinely battered and bruised by the car crash nature of his own relationship. The Edge adds depth and colour to the song with some perceptively restrained guitars. The song isn't the most immediate the band have released but on third or fourth listen it hits you right between the eyes with its honesty and bravery.
"One" leads perfectly into the alternative rock sounding "Until The End Of The World." The song was written for film maker Wim Wenders, whom the band are all said to be big fans of. Whether Wenders (who made a film with a similar title I believe) is a big fan of U2's homage to him or not I can't say. For me, "...End Of The World" is as good as anything on the album. Bono sounds bitter and hurt, the rhythm section are flawlessly concise and unfussy, whilst The Edge sounds like a moody Johnny Marr in possession of a fuzzbox and decent distortion pedal.
In stark contrast to track four is the grand and self-important "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses." A track which leaves me cold - it is one of those songs everyone is supposed to love. Musically it showcases some massively droning and distorted guitars (very un-U2), yet it is old U2 trapped inside a new early 90s packaging - It just doesn't work. It isn't a bad song, it's just mediocre and out of place. Lyrically there are some nice touches but the Americanised title undermines any lyrical muscles the song can flex;
"Well you left my heart Empty as a vacant lot For any spirit to haunt"
Track 6 is the late-night funk-ballad (does that make any sense??) "So Cruel" - a wonderfully candid account of the end of a relationship viewed through the eyes of a still bleeding heart. Musically it is awesome! Mullen's groove-orientated beat seems oddly out of place, yet somehow acts as a heartbeat for the ornate strings and stately piano line. Bono sounds fragile and human and is very much the polar opposite of the mullet-sporting, fist-clenching, rock god of 1980s sell-out stadium shows. My favourite lyrical extract of the album comes midway through "So Cruel";
"She wears my love Like a see-through dress Her lips say one thing Her movements something else Oh love Like a screaming flower Love Dying every hour"
The aching melancholy of "So Cruel" gives way all of a sudden to the heavy rock carnage of smash-hit single "The Fly." This is a classic example (perhaps the only one!!) of where Music Cassettes (remember those) helped rock bands out. I owned "Achtung Baby" on cassette and the time it took to fast-forward through all the dead tape at the end of side one gave you time to allow "So Cruel" to slip into the back of your mind. On CD the way in which the anaemic "So Cruel" practically trips over the burly, masculinity of "The Fly" is almost comedic. Anyway, back to said "Fly"....
"The Fly" must be just about the best number one single ever. It had no right to even scrape into the top twenty as a commercial representative of an international rock act's forthcoming album. A huge, grotesque beast of a rock song, it comes resplendent with heavy vocal distortion and a wild, yet wonderful Hendrix guitar solo.
The track always reminds me of revising for French GCSE exams (can you picture a 15 year old version of me resplendent with sony walkman and crap headphones saying out loud to myself "la chien est dans la poubelle") and of my Mum and Dad listening to radio one in the car one day with my Mum enquiring tentatively;
"is THIS really U2?"
After the maleovelent, mother-shocking "Fly" comes the funky, squelching "Mysterious Ways." Much like "Even Better Than The Real Thing", this is one of those songs that I can see why people treasure, yet personally, I find it to be predictable and one-dimensional compared to some of the other material on the album. It is a decent track on a more than decent album, is I suppose the best way of describing it. Like "The Fly", it fared surprisingly well when released into the murky waters of the British Top 40 singles market.
"Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World" is a quirky, quiet track, which does little on first inspection. Once the album has made itself familiar however, it announces itself as one of the more enduring offerings. Bizarrely Bono manages to get the line "I dreamed that I saw Dali with a supermarket trolley" into a serious rock song. Syd Barrett could have made it sound funny, Bono makes the line sound scary.
"Ultra Violet" picks the tempo (and noise) up again. Slotting in at track ten in a long batting order it is a wonderfully crafted and produced track. Lyrically it deals with loss and love, yet once again, in an original and uncorny way. Musically it is a first cousin of "...End of The World", yet its haunting backing vocals and breakneck paced guitars give it enough individuality to make its own mark on the album. Dan Lanois and Brian Eno give the song a helping hand with some wonderful production tricks, whilst Bono does Bono to PHD standard.
Disappointly the album tails off with tracks 11 and 12. Either "Ultra Violet" or the bizarrely positioned "So Cruel" would have ended the album perfectly, but U2 and their team of record making people saw fit to cock things up in terms of running order. "Acrobat" is run of the mill, earnest rock with a hint of rebellion thrown in for good measure, whilst "Love Is Blindness" is needlessly repetitive and laden with empty imagery. Musically neither song takes the album to unchartered territory and both songs sound like cast offs from "Rattle And Hum." However, both songs would have hidden quite snugly in the fat belly of this glutinous record. Positioned as they are, at the head of the table, they just don't feel quite right, although both tracks are passable enough in the main.
So "Achtung Baby"....we don't know why it's so named, we don't know what the band were listening to/reading/smoking (surely not?!?) to have come up with something so exciting and fresh. The album title is possibly explained by the fact that the band spent so long in Germany, although I think they should have been daring enough to call it "The sheer face of love", after a line from "The Fly"...can you imagine the stick they'd have got for that?
Worthy of a brief mention is the album artwork. A collage of photo's of the band loitering lazily around the world and strange pictures of cars and snakes, it somehow captures the mood of the album...especially the eyeliner-wearing, po faced picture of Bono on the front cover. Suddenly the be-mulleted one looks as glum as The Cure and The Bunnymen and you've just GOT to find out why by actually listening. Clever eh?
One thing I do know is that as much as I think "The Joshua Tree" is a great album, I listen to "Achtung Baby" to a ratio of about 3-1 against any other U2 album. It demands constant re-inspection, it deserves widespread accolade. It got the predictable treatment from some..."It's just U2 trying to sound cool" they said. Well, fair enough, but maybe, just maybe, four blokes honest enough to try something new and argue that self-taught musicianship is an advantage not a hindrance to a touring rock band, should be given a pat on the back once in a while. (*9)
...of the bunch from 1991’s Achtung Baby album and a huge No 1 single.
They were fresh faced, wide eyed young things with acne and attitude when they started, but by the time that the dark vistas of that single swamped everything else on Top of the Pops that week, that month, that year, this band had conquered America, conquered our hearts, conquered their nerves and became the epitome of COOL.
While partly recorded in Dublin, much of the album emerged ... ...he always abhorred), although by Achtung Baby the joy had partly given way to dramatics, dynamics and twisted bitterness as Bono developed from a snot nosed kid to a sleazy, cynical adult, rarely seen without his wraparound shades and affected sneer, a sort of Elvis for the 90’s but having traded the hamburgers in for a line of coke and film star cool.
Bono was always the leader, the angel, the brain, but it was The Edge who was the spirit, the ...
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Advantages: Magnificent album Disadvantages: Choice of singles
After U2 announced at the end of the Lovetown Tour in 1989 that they were going to have to go away and dream it all up again a lot of people believed this was the end of the worlds biggest band. What actually happened was the band took a few years to re-invent themselves and return with a fresh new sound. There are not many bands around that could do this and there are even less that would be willing to take the gamble, especially given U2's position. ... ...U2's heaviest album, which has the most throwaway title. This was apparently intentional, as it would mislead people who read too much into titles. So getting to the music itself was it worth the wait? Zoo Station (4:36) The album opens with this track. It is an excellent opener. This was more evident when it was the opening track at the ZOO TV tour. The track starts off with heavy use of guitars. Bono's voice is almost unrecognisable ...
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Advantages: A Change of Direction but still groundbreaking and exhilarating and U2 Disadvantages: None
After their trip into the American heartlands to rediscover their roots on the "Rattle and Hum" U2 returned home for their next foray into the recording studio. Well they overshot by several hundred miles and ended up in Berlin / East Germany for "Achtung Baby" as you may have guessed from the title. Like Bowie and Eno on the Low album they took in the industrial influences for the latest instalment in their musical journey.
The cover is a montage ... ...included a controversial full frontal picture of a certain band member that leaves his religion in no doubt (this is on the back cover)..
The album opens very quietly with a distant cowbell (musicians cowbell not cow's cowbell) , which is joined by some industrial noise and superb slurring guitar riff by the Edge taking into the stunning "Zoo Station". This is the track I took my title from and the lyrics are appropriate.
"Are You Ready For the ...
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Advantages: Meaningful Lyrics, Unique Musical Style Disadvantages: Can initially be a shock to the ear drums
...have friends who feel that Achtung Baby is just a little too different to even be compared to the Joshua Tree, but I beg to differ.
This album has been an unfailing source of entertainment and enjoyment to me since I purchased it nearly 10 years ago. It's hard to believe that it's been that long since it was released. Achtung Baby contains many tunes about the complexity of relationships. Relationships would be a bore if they were too easy, and ... ..."Even Better Than The Real Thing," it is evident that this man is begging the object of his affection/ adulation to just give him one more chance to prove himself as a worthy lover. It is as though he has put this person on a pedestal, and most likely for the wrong reasons.
In the song, "One," the theme is hurt and the inability to make another person happy. This is so often a frustrating point in relationships, when one person is trying and trying ...
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Advantages: A Classic Album which you will listen to over and over again Disadvantages: none
...TV tour to promote the Achtung Baby album, which, apart from Stay (Faraway So Close), which for me is an underrated excellent ballad, is a forgettable album, Passengers and Pop, which were also influenced by the music comming from Europe, This is a new direction from the classic album of The Josua Tree and The Unforgettable Fire, which are filled with Stadium Rock anthems, which, at that point had defined U2. This is really Europop meets Rock and ... ...know that you are in for an interesting journey indeed. - Zoo Station is a Railway station in Berlin, the European Influence sets itself out from the start.
My favourite track is the soft ballad of One, which, although it is regarded as a soft 'love ballad', is actually about breaking up. I am able to listen to this track over and over again and never get tired of hearing it. They have recently re-worked it with Mary J Blythe singing the most of ...
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Advantages: Excellent Album Disadvantages: Not their best lyrically
...After experimenting through AchtungBaby, Zooropa and Pop U2 return to their roots. "All That You Can't Leave Behind" is a great collection of songs which should please most if not all tastes.
The first track "Beautiful Day" has already been a UK number 1. It is one of the rockier tracks on the cd.
The second track "Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of" is a particular highlight on the album. At first it sounds a bit low key but after a few listens it really grows and is one of the catchier songs in recent memory.
The third song that really stood out for me was "Kite". This is a difficult song to describe but I hope it is released as a single as it deserves as wide an audience as possible.
The good sign of an exceptional album is that the choices for future single releases are not obvious. Any one of 8 tracks could be...
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Advantages: A band back to their best, 12 strong songs Disadvantages: None
...What does a band do when they've conqured the world twice over? With their brand of heartfelt rock underpinned by a spirituality and conscience that - in recent years - has also embraced irony and self-deprication, U2 enter the 21st Century with their first new release since 1997's coolly-received Pop.
The new album is aptly titled All That You Can't Leave Behind, as it neatly encapsulates both the musical content of the record, and also the band's current predicament. For U2's past has caught up with them, the basic four-piece approach of their early years revisited if not exactly recaptured. No longer spotty adolescents with raw ability and burning ambition, the clash between old and new, past and present, makes All That You Can't Leave Behind their most compelling album since AchtungBaby.
Opening with the #1 single Beautiful...
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Advantages: great improvement from parachutes Disadvantages: in my place ?
...This is definitely the most awaited record of the year, and I have to say, Coldplay really don't disappoint.
Though highly derivative from the previous "Parachutes", "A rush of blood to the head" is a step forward, with a greater confidence in songwriting and the skills to keep off from the cliches of making a thousand different versions of "Yellow", which is, IMHO, one of the worst songs they ever wrote. Highlights of this cd are "Politik", "The Scientist", "Clocks" , the title-track, and "Amsterdam". It seems that Coldplay know what they are up to, and deliver a classic here.
Let' s take a deeper look... I read many reviews and they all seem to differ, I mean they compare this record to U2's AchtungBaby, or Neil Young, but I feel Coldplay are turning a page here.
They definitely prove that Parachutes was a - great...
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Album Notes: U2: Bono (vocals, guitar); The Edge (guitar, keyboards, background vocals); Adam Clayton (bass); Larry Mullen (drums). Additional personnel: Daniel Lanois (guitar); Brian Eno (keyboards).
Recorded at Hansa Ton Studios, Berlin, Germany; Dog Town, S.T.S. and Windmill Lane Studios, Dublin, Ireland. A conscious reaction against "the myth of U2" (as guitarist The Edge put it), ACHTUNG, BABY was the result of two years work in Berlin and Dublin. Attempting to withdraw from the musical world and "re-invent" U2, the band secluded itself in studios, writing hours of material that was whittled down to 12 songs. The band's secrecy about the project aroused so much curiosity that early master tapes were stolen and bootlegged in Europe. ACHTUNG, BABY reflects the band's interest in differing musical sounds. The quasi-industrial opening to "Zoo Station" and the hip-hop influence in "Mysterious Ways," define U2 as a group of musicians determined to challenge themselves and their audience.
Album Reviews: Rolling Stone (5/13/99, p.50) - Included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the '90s." Spin (9/99, p.128) - Ranked #19 in Spin Magazine's "90 Greatest Albums of the '90s" Q (10/01, p.96) - Ranked #9 in Q's "Best 50 Albums of Q's Lifetime" Q (12/99, p.70) - Included in Q Magazine's "90 Best Albums of the 1990s" CMJ (1/6/03, p.16) - Included in CMJ's list of "Top 25 College Radio Albums of All Time" Rolling Stone (1/9/92, p.50) - 4.5 Stars - Outstanding - "...the band is able to grow confidently and consistently on its own native strengths...few bands can marshal such sublime power..." Musician (12/91) - "...ACHTUNG, BABY is dense, tough and endlessly surprising...a great accomplishment..." New York Times (1/1/92) - "..Dense, self-serious and overly ambitious: all the things this band is rightfully famous for.." Q (12/91) - 5 Stars - Classic - "...U2's heaviest album to date. And best..." - One of Q Magazine's 50 best albums of 1991. Entertainment Weekly (11/29/91) - "..refreshingly personal - deeper and denser than any of the band's previous releases..." - Rating: A Jazziz (Dec.-Jan./92, p.94) - Picked by critic John Dilberto as one of the 10 best albums of 1992.
Titles on disc 1
1.: Zoo Station
2.: Even Better Than The Real Thing
3.: One
4.: Until The End Of The World
5.: Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
6.: So Cruel
7.: Fly
8.: Mysterious Ways
9.: Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World
10.: Ultra Violet (Light My Way)
11.: Acrobat
12.: Love Is Blindness
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24.12.2000
