U2, Two Nights At Soldier Field, The Joshua Tree 30th Anniversary Tour 2017

Jun 06, 2017 James Currie Features, Music News, Reviews 0

By Christopher David

“Tell me, train-sound, with all your long-lost grief, what I can give. Dear Lord of all the fields, what am I to do?” – James Dickey, The Strength of Fields

There are albums that exist simply as a strong collection of songs that, for whatever reason, embed themselves in the cultural consciousness. Then there are albums that, in addition to doing that, also exist in a sort of thematic limbo, albums that are so strongly defined by the nature of their lyrical themes that their relevance continually shifts in new, sometimes surprising ways. So it is with U2’s 1987 classic The Joshua Tree, and over the weekend, the Irish foursome – singer Bono, guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. – once again proved that they are a singular entity in the world of popular music: a legacy act whose legacy is still being written, a giant who, instead of resting on its laurels as it could, is still reaching for new sounds while reimagining old ones to stellar effect.

To waste space here explaining the relevance of The Joshua Tree would be pointless; I’d lay even odds that you could pull a random stranger off the street just about anywhere in the world and he/she would know at least one song from the record that launched U2 into a trajectory of success few bands will ever see. Which, in some ways, is a bit of a puzzle. The Joshua Tree was a strange record to break U2 open: an album of deserts, lost souls desperate for love and meaning, stories of bootstraps and war and hopes, somewhere in there, for peace. In many ways, it’s the antithesis of what pop music represents – no pomp, no circumstance, no winks or nods. Just the church-bell chime of Edge’s now signature guitar sound, the most underrated rhythm section in popular music…and that voice, pleading, searching, sometimes even scolding. It is as much an admonition of America as it is a love letter to our storied landscape.

And part of what makes U2’s Joshua Tree 30th anniversary stadium tour so interesting is that the simplicity of U2 circa 1987 was the catalyst for 1991’s Achtung Baby and the subsequent Zoo TV tour, a direct response to U2’s discomfort at playing stadiums without any trappings or multimedia set pieces. In the years since, U2 has gone on to set the standard for the incorporation of multimedia set pieces on concert stages, so there’s an inherent paradox in this anniversary, though as Bono wryly suggested on Saturday night during the album’s lesser-known second act, ‘we’re still figuring this out.’

And figure it out they did. Eschewing a fanfare-laden intro, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” opened the proceedings with it’s whip-crack drum beat, followed by a quick and dirty slew of early hits (“New Year’s Day,” “Pride,” “Bad”) – and on Sunday, one very deep cut (“A Sort of Homecoming”). From there, a harken back to the ’87 tour had the stadium drenched in red light as the band segued into the unmistakeable intro of “Where the Streets Have No Name” and The Joshua Tree in sequential order.

For a die-hard fan, it was a dream come true, as much of the album hasn’t seen the live stage since…well, the original Joshua Tree tour. “Red Hill Mining Town” finally saw live performance, “In God’s Country” and “Trip Through Your Wires” made welcome returns, the fragile “Running to Stand Still” offered one of the most contemplative and heartbreaking stories the band has told, and a blazing “Exit” found Bono briefly slipping into a huckster-preacher character following an intro clip from a 1950s TV show called Trackdown that featured a snake-oil salesman named Trump. And while the album’s sequencing doesn’t naturally lend itself to track-for-track live performance, a haunting “Mothers of the Disappeared” effectively closed the main set as a recorded candlelight vigil for those lost in war loomed over the band from the massive screen.

Which brings us to the political relevance of this record in 2017. As the band has noted during the promotional cycle for this tour, this isn’t a nostalgia trip, nor is it simply a throw-down of a classic album for the sake of pandering to fans, and the balance between the openly-political and the deeply-personal was solid, a tightrope act that U2 (and in particular, Bono) has honed over the course of the thirty years since JT’s original release. “Bullet the Blue Sky,” with it’s mocking ‘outside, it’s America’ refrain over The Edge’s savage guitar work, is one of the most gracefully angry songs in the band’s canon, a visual reworking of “Miss Sarajevo” to reflect the children of war-torn Syria was a sobering encore opener on Sunday, and if anything, the emotional weight of Achtung Baby‘s “One” and “Ultraviolet” was diminished by added political trappings. A one-two punch of “Beautiful Day” and a storming sing-a-long of “Elevation” more than made up for it, and the band closed Sunday night with a slow-burning new song, “The Little Things That Give You Away,” slated to appear on the upcoming Songs of Experience album. Bono sang, “the night gave you a song / a light had been turned on / You walked out into the world like you belonged there,” as a classically-U2 arrangement built to a volcanic end, the unusual closer a hint that the band is ready for a new era on the back of revisiting the past.

He could have been singing about The Joshua Tree, an album that forces the listener to reflect on the heart, soul, darkness and beauty of its subject matter, either on record or – if you were lucky enough – live. No other band could have made it.

For more on U2, click here

U2 – Soldier Field, Chicago, June 3, 2017 (setlist)

Sunday Bloody Sunday

New Year’s Day

Bad

Pride (In the Name of Love)

Where the Streets Have No Name

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

With or Without You

Bullet the Blue Sky

Running to Stand Still

Red Hill Mining Town