I wonder what The Unforgettable Fire must have sounded like in 1984. Knowing U2's subsequent trajectory, it's hard to look back at this album without thinking of it as a bridge between the earnest European anthems of War and the earnest American anthems of The Joshua Tree. You get pulsing hard rock like "Wire" that both recalls "New Year's Day" and hints at "Bullet the Blue Sky." You get "Pride (In the Name of Love)," one of two songs on the album celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr., which matches the stadium-thumping power of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" beat for beat, while previewing the Gospel imagery soon to be featured in songs like "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." You get "Bad," one of their all-time great songs, simultaneously elegiac and exultant, a story of both addiction and redemption. Unfortunately, you also get a lot of aimless, repetitive, naturalistic "poetry." Songs filled with "running" and "raining" - the kind of images one might expect to hear from a ninth-grade English class upon receiving its first creative writing assignment. Co-produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, this an experimental album. And it would be a disservice to the spirit of experimentation to insist that all such experiments must result in success. Even so, it's still difficult not to hear U2 on this album as a band in flux. The obsession with the U.S. - "4th of July," "Indian Summer Sky," "Elvis Presley and America" - is evident throughout, though it has not yet resulted in an attempt to assimilate its musical roots. In many ways, U2 has always stood like an awkward colossus between the two hemispheres. This album is the sound of them trying to steady their footing. Grade: B-
