U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb: I Am Overcome

Take Two

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I've been trying to write this review for way too long. I even had one posted for the album last week, but upon rereading it, I declared it the worst album review I'd ever written and promptly took it down.

Here's the thing: U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb doesn't deserve what I gave it. As much as I just wanted to stop analyzing and start feeling, this is an album that deserves every ounce of critical energy I can put into it. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb carries the weight of U2's classics Achtung Baby and The Joshua Tree, while still managing to be as fun and inventive as they wished they were on Pop. It's just a brilliant album, one I've got on repeat in my car, one I'm playing constantly at work, one I'm talking about incessantly to anyone who will listen to me. My wife...my poor wife has to be sick by now of me asking "so what did you think about (insert song here)? Well, here's what I thought..." and then getting a mini-dissertation on the subject of Song X. The first time I listened to the album, it was "Love and Peace or Else". Lately, it's been "City of Blinding Lights".

I came close on "Original of the Species", but neither of us had the time for me to get started on that one.

U2 have created one of those rare albums, much like the other two I've already mentioned, on which pretty much any song could be a single. Just about any song on this album could be absolutely tremendous. They're not so much songs that make you think, they're songs that make you feel...while Bono's lyrics are often intriguing, they don't so much tell stories as create vibes, big words and big thoughts and big emotions that result in a listener who is going to be affected, if not mentally stimulated, by whatever song he's singing. And the production...Steve Lillywhite just might be my hero for a while. He manages to create an album where each song is its own little vignette, given its own touches unique to that song. The Edge's guitars ring crisp and clear through the epic "City of Blinding Lights", while Adam Clayton's slithering bass simply dominates "A Man and a Woman".

See? When I talk about this album, every thought leads to another thought, every emotion that comes to mind leads me in another direction. It's the type of album I'm prone to rambling on about. Please forgive me, as you read.

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Take "Vertigo". Try your best to forget the damn iPod commercial for a second. Listen to this band. Listen to how together they sound. Listen to the way Lillywhite layers pieces in there, vocals up front, solo guitar line off to the left, background whoa noises to the right, a siren coming from the back of the room...every single sound pristine, everything working together to create a massive wall, a behemoth of a song that simply cannot be ignored. So much has been made of the uno, dos, tres, catorcé! (one, two, three, fourteen!) that opens the song, but the answer to the big "why" question is: Who the hell cares? It's an engineer recording a take where Bono screws around a bit, it makes the band laugh, and it makes the album. It's the music taking over, it's rock without abandon, it's rock for the sake of rock. Because it's fun, that's why. It's as straightforward and rocking an opener as "Discothèque" was for Pop, except without all that nasty irony that gave it the bitter aftertaste. It's fantastic.

And sure, the band gets serious from here on in, but it's still the sound of a band who's being overtaken by the music. It's a band that's found the love again, the love that they were searching for on the entirety of All That You Can't Leave Behind. Remember the heart in the suitcase that became the symbol for that album? The suitcase has been opened, and the heart is simply spilling out. "Miracle Drug" borrows the urgent 3-3-2 beat of "Beautiful Day", adds a bridge toward the end that's as urgent as any of their classic material, and ends up being a monster of a song that could very well compete with the very much classic song it's borrowing from.

"Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own", despite the tremendous title, is sublime. I mean, this is a song I heard on the frigging O.C., and it just...well, I couldn't take my eyes away. It just made sense. It makes sense as I listen to it right now. Reassuring, wise, and just utterly beautiful, it's an essential addition to the U2 catalogue. It'll make a great hit single in a few months. And that bridge....my God, that bridge. If there's one thing U2 proves with How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, it's that they write one hell of a bridge these days.

Just when it seemed that bridge might be the "biggest" moment on the whole album, we have the entirety of "Love and Peace or Else", a song that just builds itself in this exquisite, perfect way as to be spellbinding. The entrance of the bass, then the handclaps, then the understated drums...by the time the dirty, bluesy guitars show up, it's gospel, it's rock 'n roll, I don't know exactly what it is, but U2's definitely on to something.

God, am I really spending an entire paragraph on every damn song? Evidently, I can't even control myself.

The song that defines the album, the one that convinced me that How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb is a classic in the U2 canon, is undoubtedly "Original of the Species".

Baby slow down...
The end is not as far as the stars
Please stay a child somewhere in your heart...

It's a love song, to be sure. It's a plea for the acceptance and perseverance of innocence, it's a bit complicated as Bono's love songs tend to be ("The Sweetest Thing" comes to mind here, as does "Love is Blindness"), but it's a love song. What it represents, however, is the band once again being overcome not just by the emotion of the lyrics, but by the emotion of the music. How sweet is it for the four primary chords of a verse in a love song to be borrowed from Pachelbel's famous "Canon in D", the gold standard of wedding songs? How amazing is it to hear Bono so overcome with a song that he can't help but add his own doodoot! doodoot! vocals to the instrumental bridge? How amazing is it to hear The Edge come up with three distinct guitar lines that lay on top of each other so perfectly to close the song? It's shivers, it's tears, it's everything I ever wanted in a U2 song, everything I ever thought I was too jaded by my reviewer's mentality to ever experience again.

By the time "Yahweh" hits to close the album proper, it's a cool-down, a spiritual release, a plea to God that everyone else feel the love that U2 expresses on this album. Still I'm waiting for the dawn, Bono says, and you can sense the optimism in his voice.

Would that more bands, would that more of humanity follow their lead.

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As a rather devoted U2 fan, I went ahead and picked up the massive $40 box set version of the album, which comes with a DVD, a hardcover book, and an extra song. The DVD is a nice little collection of videos, but nothing to write home about, necessarily. The book is a nice conversation piece, and it makes a pleasant browsing piece for while you're listening to the album, but it's not exactly essential, either. The extra track, "Fast Cars", is a throwaway when compared with the rest of the album, but it's a decent eastern-tinged song (with some nifty whoops at the end) that would probably sound great on a soundtrack. It also, oddly enough, is the song that contains the most direct inspiration for the title of the album. But that's neither here nor there. Buy the collector's edition if you're a fan, because admit it, you want all this stuff. But don't buy it if you're expecting a revelatory U2 experience of some sort. The album alone is enough for that.

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Quick hits on the songs I missed:

"City of Blinding Lights" is totally and utterly epic--any band that can make a song almost six minutes long and have me wishing for more is worth listening to.

"All Because of You" rocks the way "Elevation" wishes it did.

"A Man and a Woman" is officially the Adam Clayton showpiece. Worth listening to for the slithery bassline alone, I rather enjoy its vaguely James Bond-theme feel.

"Crumbs from Your Table" is drenched in enough reverb to make it sound like it would have fit in on Rattle and Hum. It makes my car speaker go into full-on static mode for some reason. But I won't hold that against it. Still, it's the least remarkable of a remarkable set, which is hardly an insult.

Finally, "One Step Closer" seeps into my brain like so much molasses vapor, if such a thing existed. Serene and beautiful, to the point where I may just sing my son to sleep with it tonight.

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Most great musical achievements have some sort of tension associated with them, a sort of pull-then-release that provokes the emotions of the listener. U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb is all release. Listening to U2 follow up albums that have made them the quote-unquote "Biggest Band in the World" has always been interesting--Rattle and Hum was an excursion into other genres as well as a game of "look how many famous friends we have now!" Zooropa was like watching a big band curl up in a little ball and speak some really brilliant, endearing gibberish. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb is a band that's saying "Now that we've got your attention, here's what we really wanted to say". It's All That You Can't Leave Behind to the nth power, it's grand, it's majestic, it's music to my ears.

U2 didn't dismantle the atomic bomb, they took it to the moon and detonated it. Here on earth, we get to witness the fireworks.