Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 20/11/06
Label: Island

It was something of a challenge being a U2 fan at the back end of the '80s. Particularly if you were a teenager aspiring to any semblance of cool, such as that derived from the pages of the gunslinging music press. Bono and the boys only made it harder by twatting around in cowboy hats, gazing epically toward the skyline and going on about America constantly. Rejecting the crucial signifiers of a great rock'n'roll band - herculean drug taking - while embracing such banned substances as religion, the "Rattle & Hum" era saw U2 stoop to new levels of lampoonery. Time for some big sunglasses, surely.

Enter "Achtung Baby". In 1991, U2 actually became cool, perhaps for the first time. Through a series of black, gripped recordings, provocative imagery and, of course, vast emotional clarity, finally here was a group landing some haymakers, while wearing the right clothes and saying the right things. Which is, in essence, the problem with "U218", although not the only one. This compilation has prompted plenty of controversy amongst the group's community, beyond the music. Like, why have they released a new compilation so soon after their 1990s retrospective? Surely they don't need the money to pay for that ludicrous, near biblical tower in Dublin?

Who knows but, more importantly, they've really taken the easy route on the tracklisting, which was apparently chosen to reflect, simply, the band's most popular songs. The singles, obviously. Brave stuff, boys. So, no attempt has been made to suggest that here is a group that actually pushed it out, as U2 have. There is no desire to challenge their - enormous - audience. You will not, for example, be given the opportunity to consider the likes of "Bad", "One Tree Hill", "God Part II", "All I Want Is You", "Zoo Station", "Miss Sarajevo", "The Wanderer" etc, which say as much about this group as the billowing, radio-friendly unit-shifters strung-out here. Which are, inevitably, mind-numbingly familiar.

Perhaps as crucial though, is the realisation that U2's music has grown pretty leaden in the last decade. Many of the tracks taken from the overrated but commercially killer whale sized "All That You Can't Leave Behind" and "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb" are plain dull, lacking the epic, questing drama of, say, "Where The Streets Have No Name", "One", "New Year's Day". OK, so "Vertigo" might well contain one of Edge's finest guitar breaks, but "Beautiful Day" sounds like the theme music to a TV football show, funnily enough, and the two new tracks, "Window In The Skies" and "The Saints Are Coming" are about as arresting as a bent copper. "Sweetest Thing", meanwhile, is up there with The Kooks' finest moments.

Of course, there are some magnificent songs on "U218" and they have an enormous career to chronicle, whether a new best of is due or not. Yahoo! Music would humbly suggest, however, that you go out and buy "Achtung Baby" instead. The mangled feedback and locomotive adrenalin rush of the opening 60 seconds of that record speaks of a bravely different group to the one found here.

    by Ben Gilbert