Not only are Bono's lyrics obsessed with America, but country and blues influences are heard throughout the record, and instead of using these as roots, they're used as ways to add texture to the music. Unexpectedly, U2 have also tempered their textural post-punk with American influences. That means that even the anthems - the epic opener "Where the Streets Have No Name," the yearning "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" - have seeds of doubt within their soaring choruses, and those fears take root throughout the album, whether it's in the mournful sliding acoustic guitars of "Running to Stand Still," the surging "One Tree Hill," or the hypnotic elegy "Mothers of the Disappeared." So it might seem a little ironic that U2 became superstars on the back of such a dark record, but their focus has never been clearer, nor has their music been catchier, than on The Joshua Tree. It's a move that returns them to the sweeping, anthemic rock of War, but if War was an exploding political bomb, The Joshua Tree is a journey through its aftermath, trying to find sense and hope in the desperation. Using the textured sonics of The Unforgettable Fire as a basis, U2 expanded those innovations by scaling back the songs to a personal setting and adding a grittier attack for its follow-up, The Joshua Tree.
The Joshua Tree is the sound of the quest that leaves you transformed.Purchase and download this album in a wide variety of formats depending on your needs. But the spirit of travel and adventure remains, as does the spirit of being lost in a strange place and soaking in the beauty of the unknown. The album’s original title was The Two Americas.
They rock with the tools of their era, but they also tap into something eternal. The backdrop-the inky washes of sound, courtesy of Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois-captures constant change, but the foreground-the march-like rhythms, the impassioned vocals-is steadfast and firm. The words point to romantic love (“With or Without You,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”) but also to the search for God and meaning-a reflection of the dualities they found in both gospel and the romanticism of Van Morrison and Patti Smith. But if you sit back, it sounds minimal and direct. If you lean in close, you can pull apart the sound in layers: the wisps of guitar, the bits of pocket-watch percussion (“One Tree Hill”). But if he was going to sing the way he was capable of singing-the way he so obviously wanted to sing-he’d have to buckle down and write words he really believed in. Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders had told Bono he had an amazing voice.
Now they were exploring the liberations that come with constraint.
In the past, they’d let their songwriting be loose and in-the-moment-after all, planning would’ve been unpunk. But the stakes were higher now: They’d already been crowned Band of the ’80s by Rolling Stone (in 1985, no less), and their live shows had become the kind of spectacles that inspired rapture.Īdd to this the anxiety that The Joshua Tree represented something new for the band: the gospel influences, the emotional nakedness, the introduction of understatement to a sound that had defined itself by its forthrightness. He’d had this feeling before, of course-he later said he couldn’t figure out why anyone would even buy a U2 album. Too many mistakes, he thought, too many wrong moves. Shortly before U2 released what became one of the best-selling albums of all time, Bono thought about calling the record-pressing plant to stop production on it.