gtaylor@lasspvax.UUCP (10/12/84)
References: Sender: Reply-To: gtaylor@lasspvax.UUCP (Greg Taylor) Followup-To: Distribution: Organization: Theory Center (Cornell University) Keywords: The annals of popular criticism are chock full of clever wags who require little more to sink an aspiring bit of vinyl than a simple half twist of the title. Small wonder, too--given the penchant that some bands and their marketers have for momentous titling (the Jeff Beck classic "Truth" springs quickly t mind here), who could resist being able to tar substandard product with the same brush used to paint it? On the basis of names alone, U2 have set themselves up in a big way: they've dicided to give their current release the moniker _T_h_e _U_n_f_o_r_g_e_t_t_a_b_l_e _F_i_r_e. How's that for pluck? Not satisfied with _t_h_a_t, they went out and hired no less than Brian Eno for their producer. You can hear the little grinding wheels turning now: "No fire, only smoke" "My life in the Bush of Guests"--and so on. When the current single off of the album "Pride (In the Name of Love)" hit the turntables, some of the wags were a bit quieter than usual. Indeed, "Pride" bears a strong fam- ily resemblence to U2 at it's best--the swirling mass of guitar-like noise, the booming bass and martial rattle of Mullen's drums, and Bono Vox's impassioned wail filling the spinnaker. The surprise was the relative _l_a_c_k of Brian Eno's production. Good news for the listener, bad news for the criticalwag. I mean, these youngsters are getting _p_o_p_u_l_a_r not to say _p_o_l_i_t_i_c_a_l. Their music still bears the earmarks of strong, religious experience: If the new album's title is indeed a reference to Pentecost, then this album must be the approaching roar of the Dove descending. Now that _T_h_e _U_n_f_o_r_g_e_t_t_a_b_l_e _F_i_r_e is actually on the racks and in the homes, it's passed into that realm in which it becomes the mirror of its owner's expectations--an album that so strongly lays its strengths alongside its weaknesses that it provides ample ammunition for both the True Believer and the lynch mob. For my part, this is an album fraught with unexpected risks. Rather than pursuing a program of either cranking out the marketable maelstrom or flirting with a sort of self- experimentation that usually winds up as self indulgence, U2 has produced an album that is very much their own, and very clear about their response to the limitations imposed by popularity. They have chosen in several places to follow the lead of earlier Eno solo work and go for first-take roughness and the strategy of extemporaneous lyricism rather than swaddle the album in obvious Enossification. The sonic stamp of Eno and Daniel Lanois' production is a subtle application of shade and the placement of odd little har- monic moments in the midst of the usual modal crash and wail. In its most explicit form, it comes down to Bono's simple benediction in "MLK" intoned over a minimal pseudo- choir. In its most subtle and seductive form, the treated strings that slice through the "lead" portion of the title track manage to enlarge U2's sonic possibility without seeming out of place. U2 have taken the "change of direction" they've talked about since the release of "War" at a time when putting out another Steve Lillywhite produced opus would have been the safe thing to do. There is plenty of material here to allow the band to get their listeners to sit through a little looser approach--especially when the actual singing itself is precisely what we have come to expect, only in a less polished form. The politics of the album are intensely per- sonal: the war zone runs cleanly through the heart, and the intensely religious urges here come booming at you here as something like the Platonic form of union, oneness, and Love itself. What may seem a lack of linearity is better described as an excess of zeal: the narration of some great event without the aid of aesthetic distance. The real experiments (and the easiest place to come down hard on the album) lie with Bono's increasing interest in a sort of "singing in tongues" approach to lyricism. The technique is used in at least 3 or 4 tunes, the most obvious being the incantatory "Elvis Presley and America". As Bono's voice and his images wander, the acoustic balance of his voice itself alters, moving from a deep-space rumble to an edgy falsetto played against the Edge's jangly acoustic gui- tar. Following the more focused and political quality of their last album "War", this is really out of left field. The stabbing, snarling rant of "Wire" runs headlong into the slick atmospherics of "The Unforgettable Fire". For some listeners, this method of putting things in order will surely come off as a failure outside of either the physical space or the volume levels of U2's absolutely riveting live performances (as their live "Under a Blood Red Sky" only begins to suggest). I think that in the context of the album as whole, _T_h_e _U_n_f_o_r_g_e_t_t_a_b_l_e _F_i_r_e constitutes a risk for both the performer _a_n_d the listener. The approach to performance clearly cannot be a lack of craft--indeed, the actual sound of the album is their most lush and carefully assembled to date. The crucial element to taking Bono's extempore wailing is a willingness to listen _w_i_t_h instead of listening _t_o. Like U2's fellow countryman Van Morrison, that is a cons- cious choice, a conscious vulnerability and invitation to stand ot the same vantage as the performer. I'll take an album that risks and succeeds only a part of the time over one that risks little _a_n_y day.