Because the tunes are so indebted to that most cliché-ridden of genres (the blues), because his range is truly impressive, and because nobody can mic impassioned, British Isle hollering quite like Eno (just ask David Bowie), Bono gets away with a lot that a lesser man would not.
The wordless, wailing refrain of “With or Without You” still sends shivers down your spine, but Bono is lucky he’s such a nice guy and he’s even luckier that he makes such an enigmatic frontman because he’s one of the sloppiest, wackest lyricists in the game. The delay effects on the Edge’s guitar create intentionally artificial-sounding echoes like Kevin Shields, who recently said he doesn’t play guitar so much as use it to manufacture sound and then play that sound, these guys find beauty in the manufactured. The rhythm section is metronome-tight, grounding the wraithlike guitar work and the wild-card vocals. This is largely thanks to the production work of Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, who took Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” aesthetic and updated it for the Reagan era. The album might not be as magnificent as the masses claim, but it’s not without its share of magnificence. Take a look at the elaborate reissues that Island Records is releasing this week: four new versions (remastered, remastered and deluxe, remastered and deluxe with a DVD, and remastered on vinyl) of an album that 20-something million people already own that will probably still sell like hotcakes. Joshua Tree lacks the dynamics and energy of U2’s punkier War and more experimental Achtung Baby, both of which are more engrossing listens, but it’s not surprising that the album is so adored.
With an opener like that, there’s nowhere to go but down, and the rest of U2’s The Joshua Tree (even the super-hits “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and “With or Without You”) never comes close to reaching the grandeur of its opening salvo. I’ll spare you a garden-variety, dancing-to-architecture description of the delay-heavy guitars and absorbing percussion work you’ve heard this song a million times and it’s well worth hearing a million more. “Where the Streets Have No Name” is one of the greatest works in music history-one of only a handful of pop songs that reveals that a four-piece band can compose a sonic aura as sweeping and impressive as a symphony.