Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Musician APRIL 1987 - by Bill Flanagan

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP, AND YOU'RE ALL INVITED

Bono is the best folksinger going right now; The Joshua Tree proves it. In 1987 the local folk music is rock 'n' roll, so rather than simply play an acoustic guitar, Bono is accompanied by bass, drums and electric guitar. Rock 'n' roll bands have usually found their fire in tension and competition: instruments daring each other to top this, individuals matching talent and egos, yet how remarkable to find a great rock 'n' roll band bom of musical cooperation and unselfishness.

Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen and The Edge play like one person - the web of sound on The Joshua Tree gives equal weight to rhythm, melody and harmony, to top, middle and bottom. Just like an acoustic guitar. Much of the time the three players hold down a steady throb, and let Bono's voice add the tension and dynamics. It's less minimalism than subtlety - if Bono goes from a whisper to a wail, there's no need to start pounding and cascading behind him. And when the whole band does cut loose - as they do on Exit - it hits twice as hard.

This is the group's second collaboration with Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, and their sound is very much a continuation of 1984's The Unforgettable Fire, the same misty moodiness, the pings and pangs of Edge's guitar over sheets of drone chords. The prototypical U2 song may turn out to be 1984's Bad, which contained - as many of these songs do - both passion and gentleness, and was constructed as these are over (what sound like) triggered drums and a blanket of ringing eighth-notes. In the two and a half years since The Unforgettable Fire so many groups have copied U2 that a stylistic departure seemed likely this time, yet The Joshua Tree is more a refinement. Like Dylan and the Stones, U2 has found a musical base that can contain all sorts of songs; rather than abandon it, they are moving further inside the sound, examining its possibilities.

U2 has always proposed a world vision, and their experiences working for Amnesty International have only expanded their ability to connect the dots between different cultures, to find common ground. A lot of songs on The Joshua Tree could be loosely called "political" or "religious" but that would miss the point, just as reading U2's lyrics can distract one from the points made by Bono's voice. What is important is the sense of dignity and potency - that the world is a beautiful place, and the greatest injustice is not to cause another pain, but to deprive another of that beauty.

There's a wonderful moment here, on a song called Trip Through Your Wires, when Bono takes a raggedy harmonica solo. As a mouth organist this guy is never going to threaten Lee Oskar or Toots Thielemans, yet he blows his harp with such joy and abandon that it's hard not to be caught up in his enthusiasm. Then Edge comes in to take a guitar break. Almost any other guitarist would respond to the messy harmonica with something melodic and restrained - for the good purpose of returning the song to musical order and for the nasty purpose of showing up the sloppy harp player. But Edge follows Bono's solo with a thrashing, primitive bent-string frenzy. It's got nothing to do with good musicianship, and everything to do with love and friendship. It's a moment when real happiness jumps out of the grooves and into the room. And while it contains no evidence of planning or conscious decision, those back-toback solos are a small example of U2's "You, too" philosophy: One guy jumping around by himself is a clown - two guys jumping around together is a movement.

Sure they get too ambitious, and sometimes that looks a little silly. But U2 offers two choices - stand on the side and snicker, or climb down and join in the game. How much invitation do you need?