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How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb U2 Island Records This review first appeared in Third Way, Winter 2005.
What shall it profit a man, if you'll forgive me getting King Jamesy for a moment, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his soul? Of all those who have scaled the starry ladder to the rock'n'roll firmament, you might expect Bono, pop culture's greatest saint (with the possible exception of Bob Geldof) to have less reason than most to be troubling himself with such rhetorical questions. But this, rather than the decommissioning of WMDs, is the gnawing concern at the heart of How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. You have heard it said of this CD, 'Strong songs, no-nonsense rock'n'roll'. But what is going on under the surface? The title of U2's first album in the age of Bush and bin Laden might suggest their latest take on the state of the world; but despite glancing at poverty in 'Crumbs From Your Table' and at the Middle East in 'Love and Peace or Else', it is the state of his soul that is Bono's constant theme, making this U2's most self-absorbed, self-questioning album yet. The viewpoint is summed up by the great opening hit 'Vertigo': we are taken up to a high place of stardom and wealth and shown the glory thereof, and a familiar voice whispers, 'All of this can be yours/Just give me what I want'. Elsewhere Bono confesses 'I'm round the corner from anything that's real/…in a rip tide/That's taken everything I call my own'. 'What happened to the beauty I had inside of me?' 'I'm not broke' he says truly enough, 'but you can see the cracks.' 'I know these fast cars will do me no good/I'm going nowhere.' This sense of lostness is powerfully reinforced by the way that broken sentences get tangled up in each other: 'The jungle is your head/Can't rule your heart'; 'Some pray for others steal'. And yet the album is steeped in hope of various kinds. 'Except you', Bono sings in the midst of 'Vertigo', 'give me something I can feel'. Whichever 'you' this might be, it evokes both the touching love songs and prayers that follow. The love makes enough difference for him to tell the women he meets away from home, 'I could never take the chance/Of losing love to find romance'. And 'Yahweh' prays to be remade: 'Take this soul…' Above all 'Miracle Drug' holds out for the breakthrough of a love that feels what another feels, that recognizes potential and celebrates freedom, that hears the whisper beneath the din, 'I was a stranger and you took me in'. In fact the album that laments 'You're gone and so is God' is more profusely littered with divine conversations than any other. Where else do we recognize God better than in his absence? This is the paradox that makes U2 as well worth listening to as ever. |
the album that laments 'You're gone and so is God' is more profusely littered with divine conversations than any other. |
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