The Joshua Tree remastered

U2 - The Joshua Tree 20th Anniversary Edition
Still fresh and clean after all these years.

November 21, 2007 - Hard to believe that it's been 20 years since U2—Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen—first released Joshua Tree, arguably their breakthrough to the big league album. Sure, both War and Unforgettable Fire thrust the band into arena rock territory, but it was JT that truly made them stadium stars the world over. It was also a turning point album, showing them moving even further away from their post-punk roots and into more streamlined, albeit lushly so, sonic terrain. Bono and company began experimenting more with the Blues and Gospel intonations, mixing those elements into their harmonically saturated guitar spectrum and taught rhythm structures.

For the 20th Anniversary celebration the boys have released two versions, one a double disc package, the other a double disc + CD package. Both feature the original 11 track album, which holds up surprisingly well all these years later. Seminal tracks like "Where The Streets Have No Name," "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," and "With or Without You" still resonate with that hit status the enjoyed upon release. Meanwhile "Bullet the Blue Sky" is still one of the most incendiary things the group has ever kicked out, rumbling with turgid intensity. "In God's Country" still manages to conjure up spine tingles thanks to Edge's scratchy guitar theatrics and Bono's raggedly impassioned yelping, not to mention Clayton and Mullen's steady back beats. And both "One Tree Hill" and "Mothers of the Disappeared" still reverberates with the ghost of "40," a quiet, progressive number that bubbles with hidden smolder. Even the lesser known numbers ("Exit," for example) burn brightly upon rediscovery.

On the whole this is one of the last truly great—from start to finish—albums that U2 put out at what was arguably the peak of their career. Sure, they've gone on to bigger fortune, fame, and social consciousness since, but this album, without question, was a benchmark in their aural legacy to the world. If you have yet to discover the wealth of passionate material that this album has to offer, then this will be a worthy treat indeed. And if you just needed a reminder of how great the band was at this particular moment in time, well here it is.

While revisiting the original album is worth the price of admission, the real treat here lies in Disc 2, which features a number of B-Sides (back in the day U2 were great about releasing singles packed with bonus outtakes and rare tracks, many of which were often as inspiring as those that actually made it on to their albums).

Things kick off with "Luminous Times (Hold on to Love)," one of the B-Sides from the "With or Without You" single. The track is built around piano and rippling drums that caress Bono's whisper croon. It's a melodramatic, slow-burn number that is much more PoMo Romanticism than perhaps anything else they've ever done. "Walk To The Water" is the other number sniped from the "With Or Without You" single. It's mostly Bono waxing poetic in a loping spoken word style over hollow drums, lulling basslines, and a droll, crystalline guitar riff of a circular nature. It's an interesting experiment, if nothing else (Bono doing "beat").

"Spanish Eyes," taken from the B-Side of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," brings back that O.G. U2 vibe thanks to upfront harmonics and Bono cajoling his lyrics at the outset. Then it dips into neo-Glam territory (think Bowie, Pop, and Ferry all mixed into a blender and spilled into a too small glass). In the end it dissolves into a hodge-podge of various U2 stylistics and suffers from a bit of identity crisis. The other B-Side from "I Still..." is "Deep In The Heart." Sounding not unlike something leftover from Unforgettable Fire it unfurls with drifting harmonics, lumbering bass, taught drums, and Bono's signature breathy vocal croon. It's mesmerizing.

"Where The Streets Have No Name" almost dominates the second disc thanks to several B-Sides, a single edit, and an alternate version of one track. First up from the flip side is the Blues intoned "Silver and Gold," which signals the sound that The Edge would begin exploring more in-depth post Joshua Tree, utilizing a much grittier guitar tone and going for big, sprawling riffs with an obvious Link Wray infatuation. Then there's "Sweetest Thing," which was one of those rare B-Sides that went on to be a hit in its own right and with good reason. Bono's lilting croon bobs from being smoothly alluring to a beguiling yelp in the drift of a moment. "Race Against Time" again sounds like something leftover from Unforgettable, dwelling much more in that ambient slipstream than anything on JT (it's more or less a bass and conga driven slice of shifting tonality). The single edit of "WTSHNN" will take a discerning ear to notice the differences between it and the original. And the Sun City version of "Silver And Gold" is a rambling, ramshackle Country Blues shuffle thanks to the presence of Keith Richards, Ron Wood, and Steve Jordan. Raspy, ragged, and gritty to the core.

The final five inclusions on this disc are outtakes from the Joshua Tree sessions, providing a glimpse into some of the music that was left on the proverbial editing room floor. "Beautiful Ghost/Introduction To Songs Of Experience" is rife with ambient textures, utilizing Brian Eno's drifting temperament expertly (although the track was produced by the band and not the Eno/Lanois combo most noted for their lush enhancements to the music). In many ways this track sounds like something Peter Gabriel would have kicked out circa Peter Gabriel III. Bono's whisper rendition of a William Blake poem creates a really hypnotic vibe that is light years away from anything that ended up on JT.

"Wave Of Sorrow (Birdland)" is built around piano and synth and produced by Lanois and Eno. It's a stripped down piece of quietude and melancholy. Meanwhile "Desert Of Our Love" puts Mullen's drums and Clayton's bass upfront, wrapping themselves thickly around Bono's tentative vocalistics. It's stripped down Blues-meets-Testifying Gospel that slowly brings in piano and lets Bono flex his vocals from croon to yelp to shouting passion, though most of it unintelligle mumbling (as if he were channeling early Michael Stipe). It's rough around the edges, sounding a lot like something that they were working on loosely in the studio, which adds greatly to its appeal.

With "Rise Up" the group continues to extrapolate the Country/Blues elements that are sprinkled throughout the bulk of JT. As with "Desert Of Our Love" this track feels rough around the edges, showing the band in a looser, almost jammier light as they work through the track (though it's mostly Bono who seems tentative and working out the vocal kinks more than anything else). Still, it's the overall loose nature of the track that makes it so appealing.

The final inclusion is "Drunk Chicken/America" in which Bono recites chunks from Allen Ginsberg's epic poem, "America." It's kind of weird to hear Bono affect an quasi Ginsberg-meets-Burroughs intonation to his speaking. Instrumentally, the track is all jagged guitar, bouncing drums, whiffs of organ and bubbling electro rhythms. It's an interesting take on beat attitude, that's for sure, and continues to highlight the group's fascination with the good, old U.S.A. (as also evidenced on core JT tracks like "Bullet The Blue Sky").

For someone who already owns the original version of Joshua Tree and is a U2 completist (i.e. they have all the singles, B-Sides, rarities, 12-inches, and whatnot) then this release might seem a bit redundant. But for somebody who is looking to update their well-worn copy of JT or a young'un who might not as of yet discovered the joy that lurks in the U2 back catalog, then this release is essential indeed. The original album is still teeming with emotion, running the gamut from anger and frustration to emphatic jubilation. The secondary disc is equally packed with all manner of music from the profound to the profane, the artful and the arcane, which is exactly how a disc of B-Sides and Rarities should be.

Download Worthy:
1. "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
2. "Bullet The Blue Sky"
3. "Running To Stand Still"
4. "In God's Country"
5. "One Tree Hill"
6. "Silver And Gold"
7. "Sweetest Thing"
8. "Race Against Time"
9. "Silver And Gold (Sun City)"
10. "Beautiful Ghost/Introduction To Songs Of Experience"
11. "Desert Of Our Love"
12. "Rise Up"

ign

STING - FRAGILE:
"It's Probably Me" and "Fragile" (Sting). And speaking of Brits, even the Demolition Man himself, that sturdy-old stand by Mr. Gordon Sumner, a.k.a. Sting, got into the act with "It's Probably Me," taken from the soundtrack to the Mel Gibson-Danny Glover action vehicle Lethal Weapon 3, released in 1992, and boasting the assistance of Eric Clapton, on guitar, and jazz-pop staple David Sanborn, on sax. It resurfaced a year later, with a totally redone rhythm arrangement, on Sting's excellent Ten Summoner's Tales (A&M), and joins an earlier achievement, available on Nothing Like the Sun (A&M, 1987)-the achingly beautiful "Fragile" ("On and on the rain will fall / Like tears from a star / On and on the rain will say / How fragile we are")-as his two most convincing forays into this area. Mixing sincere concerns for the environment with a lovely guitar-arpeggio interlude, "Fragile" is the one to get, and his finest all-around effort to date, as it all-but incorporates the basic bossa formula I've been hinting at throughout. There's also a version for the Latin American market, sung in excruciatingly bad Portuguese, on the otherwise all-Spanish-language Nada Como el Sol., from 1988 (A&M). From there Sting wandered perilously close to "lounge lizard" territory, most of all with his Mercury Falling (A&M, 1996), a dreary affair whose few highlights do not include the risible "La Belle Dame Sans Regrets," sung en français, naturellement, and patterned after the oeuvre of the late Tom Jobim. He has yet to fully recover from that misguided conception. Let's hope his concerts with ex-Police band-mates Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers can repair the damage done to their musical integrity and turn things around for the eclectic songsmith.

Astrud's Contribution - The Bossa Nova territory. If ever any singer lacked the goods to make it in the music field, that person was undoubtedly Astrud Gilberto. In hindsight, most Brazilians still owe a profound debt of gratitude to her ingenuous language skills: she built up a solid career-footing on the flimsy foundations of one fortuitous recording session - a session that eventually gave rise to an entire generation of pop idols. As luck would have it, Astrud was asked by Verve Records to perform the English verses of the songs "The Girl from Ipanema" and "Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars" (Corcovado) in her patently awful Brazilian accent. With her then husband João Gilberto on acoustic guitar, starting off in Portuguese in his typical rambling style, the legendary Stan Getz, as winsome as ever on tenor saxophone, and composer Tom Jobim in the background, strumming away on his rhythm guitar or gently stroking his piano, the tunes instantly caught the imagination of a hit-starved world audience - and catapulted every one if its Brazilian participants, including drummer Milton Banana, to the front ranks of jazz-pop artists, way back in 1963. It would do well for us fans of Música Popular Brasileira to remember, then, that if it had not been for Astrud Gilberto's allegedly "bad" American English, many of the songs and composers we now honor and take for granted would never have been recognized at all, let alone recorded, by such greats as Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, and Ella Fitzgerald, just to name a random few. An adventurous Foreign Sound - in view of the foregoing, it's really not so "foreign-sounding" after all.
This is a video 'Call Me' a tribute for films with phonecalls: