After what has felt like aeons of U2 chasing relevance, it seems the group might finally be coming to terms with the fact that, yes, relevance is relative. It’s not about being the biggest band in the world, although U2 were just that at one time. It’s about being who you are, at your core, and relevance, whatever that even means, will follow.
U2’s “relevance” at one time meant dominating the world, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. The band grew from scrappy post-punk roots toward coalescing various genres into a distinctive, sweeping sound, augmented by spiritual and political lyrical themes. Their sound may be grandiose, but it also has an introspective quality.
U2 stayed true to themselves during their period of world domination, but around the 2000 mark, they seemed to lose their way in their quest to maintain dominance. 1987’s Joshua Tree marked the culmination of their classic sound (began with Boy and October, crystallized with War and Unforgettable Fire, and reached its apotheosis on the Americana-tinged Joshua Tree). Meanwhile, 1991’s Achtung Baby inaugurated an era of sonic expansion and innovation that began to wear thin by the time Pop came around in 1997.
People became weary of the faux-hipster irony that Zooropa and Pop embodied, and wary of Bono’s insufferable Messiah persona. An awkward earnestness had tempered earlier versions of him. Now he was just an aggravating ego-freak, sans mullet.
When U2 began to fall out of relevance in the 2000s, they had to “chase” it by mimicking (and diluting) their classic sound and assimilating contemporary pop trends into the fold. They also aimed to recycle their “hip” experimentation phase (“Get on Your Boots” and “Vertigo,” anyone?). We won’t belabor all of the 2000s albums. Each one contains moments of magic, for sure, but the spark was largely gone. U2’s fire was becoming forgettable.
In their classic era and through Achtung Baby, millions of hearts exploded with joy upon hearing the Edge’s alarm clock guitars ringing out of the speakers, beckoning souls from their slumber, and falling into a trance at the sound of Bono’s smooth, soaring serenade. In U2 songs, there was angsty poetry, humanizing humor, and barely contained bombast to boost youthful bravado. U2 found a way to marry opposites: Punk volatility enveloped in rousing anthems.
It seemed that U2 were lost forever. The band went astray into pitiful pandering and self-plagiarism. There was nothing like the bewitching spells cast by their earlier LPs. At times they even began to sound like Coldplay, itself a watered-down iteration of Bono and company.
However, U2 are experiencing a renaissance, subverting all expectations. Two new conceptual EPs feature songs showcasing an astounding return to form. Days of Ash and Easter Lily, when released together digitally, represent the two not-quite-polarised sides of U2: the terrestrial and the spiritual. Days of Ash is all political topics, with songs of “defiance and disma“. Easter Lily ruminates on more mystical concerns.
The first single off Days of Ash, the opener “American Obituary”, doesn’t excite the psyche as much as the other songs. It’s pretentiously aggressive, representing the band’s calculating facet, with a vaguely garage-punk sensibility and gimmicky sloganeering.
It does sincerely address the tragic downfall of Renee Good, however, even recalling the spirit of “Bullet the Blue Sky”, the preeminent anti-imperialism anthem, this time focusing on ICE: “9:30 Minneapolis / To desecrate domestic bliss / Three bullets blast, three babies kissed / Renee, the domestic terrorist?”
U2 are far better when they lean heavily into their latent passions and outrage. “Tears of Things” does just that, delivering an anguished cry against the horrors that humanity perpetuates upon itself. Lulling guitar notes caress Bono’s lament as he sorrowfully declares: “If you put a man into a cage and rattle it enough / a man becomes the kind of rage that cannot be locked up.”
“Song of the Future” is the centerpiece of the EP, packing emotional power. The song about Sarina Esmailzadeh, a 16-year-old Iranian feminist murdered by theocrats in 2022, has a lively rhythm, funky, hopeful guitar tones, and some falsetto flourishes. The lyrical and musical contrasts bolster the song’s potency, uplifting it to a stirring celebration of a vibrant life cruelly cut short.
“Wildpeace,” “One Life at a Time,” and “Yours Eternally” follow, the former featuring a war-weary poem by an Israeli poet and set to arresting music, dedicated to Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen; and the latter a moving piece featuring Ed Sheeran and Taras Topolia, meant to give hope to Ukrainian freedom fighters.
In between, “One Life at a Time” is a slow-moving, dark musing on humanity’s painfully slow “crawl” toward peace, with Bono-ized aphorisms: “Look around / what you see depends on where you stand / how you fall depends on where you land.”
Easter Lily is even more impactful than Days of Ash. The instrumentation is lush, the melodies beatific. The band sounds refreshed, imbued with casual conviction – not trying to second-guess what listeners want. True, neither EP pierces the U2 paradigm like Achtung Baby did. This is, rather, classic-era U2, modernized.
The Edge eases us into the second EP with his chiming guitars and comforting croon, lending his full voice to the gorgeously textured track “Song for Hal”, about the death of collaborator Hal Wilner. You’ll swear it’s Bono singing at first, as the bandmates’ vocal personae are stunningly similar, but listen more closely and you can discern the difference; it’s in the timbre. “In a Life” contains multiple melodies, and climbs ethereally toward a euphoric chorus. It’s a candidly confessional song about friendship.
“Scars” is the best song across both EPs. It’s the most structurally sound and poetically powerful in its naive yet somehow epiphanic message to embrace your flaws. “Scars” builds from pensive percussion and intimately intoned vocals to an almost ear-splitting climax: “Don’t cover your scars / They’re your scars.” When Bono pushes his singing toward those blissful heights, we are lured back to when his voice reverberated across radios. However, we are also prompted to be in the present, as we become blinded by the light of the higher-range vocals and their lyrical “lesson.”
The last minute and a half of the song finds it downshifting into political poetry: “Feel the nails of the state / Feel the contours of control / The silver spikes of friendship / Traded for a soul.” In other words, Jesus’ crucifixion can represent oppression by external forces, and also of our own selves. Nobody ever accused U2 of being atheists. The song coasts to a quiet conclusion on a gentle raft of acoustic guitar and bright, pleading vocals.
“Resurrection Song”, “Easter Parade,” and “Coexist” round out the EP. The former is a jaunty sing-song with sprightly riffs, while “Easter Parade” is vibrantly vintage-sounding; you’ll swear it lept off of October. Both tracks affirm spiritual faith in joyful and reflective tones. “Coexist,” on the other hand, a slice of vocoder-infused verse, is agnostic in spirit: “Drones hover without any consciousness over war crimes / I will bless the Lord at all times?”
Days of Ash and Easter Lily sound like lost U2 classics. Moody bass, fierce and stately drums, shimmering, chill-inducing guitars, Bono’s anguished cosmic croon, political and spiritual themes percolating throughout. The alchemy is unquestionably U2. The panoramic atmospherics, shot through with mercurial incandescence. They have not sounded this alive since Achtung Baby.
On Days of Ash and especially Easter Lily, U2 sound wholly reinvigorated. They are not striving for world domination; they are just content being themselves, relevance be damned.