U2 - How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
U2’s How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb doesn't sustain the huge rock factor insinuated up front by "Vertigo," but it does reveal a worthwhile alternative identity.
Having evidently lost their ability for brevity in album titling (after all, this is the band that brought you such albums as Boy, War, and Pop, not to mention Zooropa and Achtung Baby, which sounded cool even if they were more than one syllable), U2's second consecutive exercise in forcing their fans to create an acronym to save time winds up creating an intriguing paradox. How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (heretofore recognized as HTDAAB; pronunciation is up to you), the band's follow-up to the runaway smash All That You Can't Leave Behind (ATYCLB) isn't the sweeping, grandiose musical statement you might expect from such an ambitiously-monikered album, but it does serve as a solid document of a veteran band settling into a groove after a career-salvaging maneuver in corrective steering.
HTDAAB's central paradox lies between the impression that it exudes on the surface, with the ostentatious name, whiz-bang first single, and the band striking a typically-unimpressed rock star pose on the front jacket sleeve, and the intentions of its content, a largely introverted set of songs that focuses more on your garden-variety "small p" personal politics than your "large p" world stage International Politics. We all know Bono as the face of celebrity third-world assistance, one of the more prominent activists in a segment of the populace overwhelmed with superfluous endorsers trumping causes of the hour like "Free Albanian Writers." (All due respect to you if you happen to be an Albanian writer that needs freeing.) HTDAAB, for the most part, keeps its crosshairs focused expressly on interpersonal relations, tipped by the liberal pronoun use in such song titles as "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own," "All Because Of You" and "Crumbs From Your Table." It may take a few plays for mind to tune into the incongruities, but once you've adjusted, the album comes into focus.
The opening "Vertigo" is your ubiquitous first single, having penetrated every vulnerable section of atmosphere within the reach of television and radio signals. Much to this writer's surprise, the song's luster hasn't faded much following the eight millionth airplay and two millionth (unendorsed big-name MP3 player) commercial. It serves no deeper purpose than to just rock your face off, and by that alone it succeeds, behind The Edge's huge, melodic guitar runs and Bono's swaggering salesmanship of trifling lyrics. It rocks harder than anything else on the record, though "All Because Of You" does come close. This is not to say that The Edge is relegated to the background; his piercing, chordal style lays its fingerprints all over the record, raising the album's best song, "Miracle Drug," to lofty proportions. The Edge's contributions are not necessarily measured in volume but in placement, as on "Love and Peace Or Else," where he lays down a simple bluesy lead behind Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton's rumbling rhythm section. Bono cranks up the soul factor on "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" and "One Step Closer," tempering his aggressive delivery on "Vertigo" into something more weathered and deliberate. Van Morrison he ain't, but he does sell it a whole lot better than most.
In the end, HTDAAB doesn't sustain the huge rock factor insinuated up front by "Vertigo," but it does reveal a worthwhile alternative identity, almost in spite of its misidentifying first single. It will probably throw a wrench into the original expectations of most of the hundreds of thousands of people who have already purchased the album, but those who persist and allow the album to grow on them will find a fine, workmanlike album lurking beneath the bright veneer and token posturing. Only time will tell if the band reverts to their infamous risky experimentation mode, but for the moment, the "world's biggest band" fills its role about as well as one could realistically expect.
And I will endorse the previously-alluded to MP3 player if someone will send me one. Just none of those gaudy pastels, please.
(Interscope Records)