Customer Reviews

Achtung Baby

5 star:		(439)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

In a word: staggering. I don't know if I've ever heard an album which can even come close to capturing the kaleidoscope of sheer emotion that floods from these twelve songs. Just as Alice in Chains dragged us to the pitch black depths of heroin-addiction with "Dirt", U2 does the same, only with lost love and heartbreak as the backdrop.

Amidst the gloomy themes of the album, rays of hope still shine through in the form of The Edge's signature effect-soaked licks and some serious head-bobbing rhythm from Clayton and Mullen. The great thing about this album is its accessibility: it literally has it all. Techno/hip-hop/rockers like "Mysterious Ways" and "Even Better Than the Real Thing", and the arena-friendly chorus of "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" will bring a smile to the face of mainstream (and hardcore) U2 fans, while deeper, more experimental fare such as the industrial-tinged "Zoo Station" and the indescribable guitar orgasm of "The Fly" will challenge the listener on their inaugural spins but eventually yield rich rewards. The heart and soul of the album, however, lies in three songs..."One", "Acrobat", and "Love is Blindness". Listening to these in this order under the right circumstances could change a life, rekindle a forgotten passion, or simply reduce the listener to a sobbing heap. They are THAT powerful.

The range of feeling captured in Bono's wailing vocals on "One" is absolutely incredible, especially in the surreal crys that end the song. "Acrobat" dabbles in electronic influences and uses thick sonic brushstrokes to paint a cavernous musical environment that is completely encompassing (and this is before Bono even utters a syllable). The album ends with one of the most bittersweetly-beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard in "Love is Blindness". From the almost gothically-eerie organ intro to the penetrating echoes of Adam Clayton's bassline, the song literally stabs at your soul. And the lyrics are poetic - for example: "Love is clockworks, and cold steel, fingers too numb too feel...squeeze the handle, blow out the candle, love is blindness." Words simply can't describe how perfectly this song captures the agony of loss. You have to hear it for yourself...and that goes for this entire album. Easily U2's best, if not the best of the entire 1990's.

If THE JOSHUA TREE was U2's answer to American music, then ACHTUNG BABY is their answer to their European cousins. Gone are the country'n'western influences of U2's previous two albums, replaced with the cool, sleek danceable rhythms of the Berlin dance clubs. Emotional and hip, sincere and sarcastic, ACHTUNG manages to combine wildly differing styles into one coherent work that ranks with the best albums ever recorded.

From the opening seconds of "Zoo Station", it's clear that this is a radically different U2. Not only is the music drastically changed from the twangy sounds of albums past, but the lyrics are becoming introspective again with a slight tendency for tongue-in-cheek humour at times. Despite the fast rhythms and danceable beat, this is a dark album, perhaps one of the darkest that the band has released. But it's emotion that's been wallpapered over with neon and silver-coloured material. It's angst and pain in a nice techno-flavoured sugar pill.

Again, U2 has created an album that is more than just a combination of great songs. ACHTUNG BABY flows extraordinarily well. Each track adds a lot to the whole while managing to retain individuality. The album is incredibly focused as well, with a great feeling of longing, regret and inaccessibility being maintained for the entirety. This focus is hard for other bands to do, yet something that U2 achieves with surprisingly regularity.

In addition to being an incredibly deep album, it's also an extremely fun one to listen to. The dance beats are amazingly infectious, and Edge's guitar playing has never been better. It's hard to point to any tracks that stand out, since they are all quite exceptional. This is one of the few albums that has no tracks that are just average.

Achtung Baby is really one of those albums that you can just switch off all your other senses for - it has so much going for it musically, with consistently intriguing and moving guitar sounds, powerful bass and drums, and extraordinary vocals, not to mention some pretty good lyrics.

Whatever political aspirations U2 may have with their appeals to fans to support Greenpeace etc., this album is almost entirely devoted to love, and with several listenings, becomes a kind of litany of ballads recited by Bono to his Baby...I am not saying this album has any concept - it is a collection of fantastic independent tracks which really works - but this is an excellent album to listen to when you're feeling down, or soppy, or romantic. Aside from his voice, Bono's most endearing quality is the impression he conveys of true desperation - the climaxes his voice reaches in One or Love is Blindness are particularly moving.

This combination of great musical value with a deep-rooted romantic element really works for me, and clearly works for a lot of other people too - the album has a constantly fresh appeal, and when I look at the great works of the 90's, this sticks out as one of those that will still have appeal in ten, twenty and fifty years time.

One final thought - don't think this is solely a candlelight collection...Zoo Station opens the album brilliantly and unromantically, and The Fly is a chunky song that keeps the momentum of the album going through all the turgid descriptions of unrequited love...even with lyrics like, "a man will fall from the sheer face of love like a fly from a wall"...

Contrary to popular belief, pop music's high-point of the 90s did not come when grunge ruled the airwaves. It came when U2 released Achtung Baby. This album is filled with moods and colors that not only change the atmosphere of the room, but turn it on its head.

The album's opening track "Zoo Station," is like a subway ride through a sleezy underworld, which is only lit by a glimmer of hope. When Bono croones "Time is a train/ makes the future the past/ leaves you standing in the station/ your face pressed up against the glass," you can feel U2 taking their success from the 80s, and morphing it into the complex and confusing world of the 90s. Other tracks, such as "Until the End of the World," "The Fly," and "So Cruel," are surprising in their despair. This is the same band whose optimism dominated the charts in the 80s? Nonetheless, these songs are captivating, and leave the listener haunted and yet thrilled by the darkness we're all capable of.

But Achtung Baby is not all darkness. "Mysterious Ways" is sensual and spiritual. "Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World" is full of hope and joy, while "Ultraviolet" embraces the pain of love, and ends up in a spritual place where light and guidance is all that matters.

The lyrics of this album are like a thickly layered Yeats poem, that is always moving and changing as it is spoken. "Until the End of the World" is a moving confessional of Judas, with Jesus himself on the other side of the booth. "The Fly" is a phone call from hell, in which the sinner almost embraces and enjoys their lechery. And then there is the highpoint of the album (and possibly U2's career): the classic "One." So universal in its scope, "One" is about the struggles of a relationship, the trials of surviving AIDS, the difficulty in being yourself, the possibility of unity and peace, all wrapped up into one song. The story goes that U2 was on the verge of breaking up when they started to record this album. Frustrated with reconciling their musical differences, the band embraced the sudden emergence of this song. In the long run, "One" may have saved the band from splitting apart. "One" and Achtung Baby are a grand statement on the complexity of being human. Thank God someone was able to put it into words and set it to music; one listen and everything in the world seems to make sense.

When I first heard this album I thought it was juat plain horrable. I didn't think it compared to Joshua Tree at all. One morning my brother was playing The Fly and I remember thinking how cool it sounded. I gave the album another chance and I liked it more and more every time I heard it. I now have every U2 album and let me tell you this one is the best. It's better than Joshua Tree, it's better than Best Of 1980-1990, and if they make a Best Of The 90's, Achtung Baby will still be better unless they include every song from it. Zoo Station has an intro anyone could appreciate. Even Better Than The Real Thing is awesome. One is beautiful with some incredible lyrics. Until The End Of The World is good but to fully appreciate it you must understand that the song is about Judas Iscariot's betrayal to Christ(at the begining of the song you can hear nails being hammered symbolizing Christ being nailed to the cross). Who's Ganna Ride Your Wild Horses is great with an awesome chorus. So Cruel is a good song with meaningful lyrics. The Fly is spectacular with the falsetto singing and a really cool guitar solo. Mysterious Ways is a song you can't help but to love. Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World is a nice relaxing tune. Ultraviolet is truly nothing short of incredible. Acrobat is a deep moving song with incredebly uplifting lyrics. Love Is Blindness is a slow sad song with a dramatic ending. This truly is the best album I've ever heard. There isn't one disapointing song. If you don't have it yet than I suggest you go get it right now.

This album caps off U2's great back-to-back triumvirates starting with "Unforgettable Fire," "The Joshua Tree," and then this mold-breaking transitional master work. "Unforgettable Fire," is perhaps their most moody and artistic, "The Joshua Tree," their most earnest and spiritually fiery, but "Achtung Baby," is both commercially accessible and experimental. Whereas the Edge owned "Unforgettable Fire," and we'll give "Rattle and Hum" to Bono, this album has Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton's stamp all over it. In most songs in fact the bass line is jacked all the way up to "11" and pushes the music pile-driver style. I challenge you to find a rhythm more catchy than that created by Mullen Jr. in "Mysterious Ways."

If there is any critique of this CD, I guess it would be that each and every song is a veritable hit making them not stand out as unique works in and of themselves. The songs are so good it plays like a greatest hits album in fact. Unfortunately, this album marked U2's ungainly leap into further experimentation with the sub-standard "Zooropa" and "Pop" where Bono lost his sincerity for lyrics and the band seemingly lost their collective minds, but only for a little while as they returned somewhat to form with "All That You Can't Leave Behind (Bono's lyricism is still spotty in places)." One of the best album's of the 90's born of Berlin's Zoo Station and other urban scapes across the globe. This is U2's finest.

Just as Sgt. Pepper's was a culmination of all that had preceeded it in Pop music, Achtung Baby stands as a worthy follow up to Rock and Roll's original masterpiece. Like Pepper, AB sounds as fresh as when it was recorded. On a technical level this may be the best production ever done on an album, Eno forcing the band (against Lanois' wishes) to push the creative envelope, while Lanois makes sure Eno doesn't take our boys overboard (see "Passengers" album for example).

This is not the cut and paste sampling tricks of Beck/Dust Brothers, Fatboy Slim, or any computer trickery. This is Beatles-style instrument distortion, layering, texture forming. Eno's skill at atmposhere painting is perfect, never overdone as on "Unforgettable Fire".

Moreso than the Beatles ever did, U2 finally flex their musical muscles creating 12 songs that are not interchangeable, each a distinct and unique piece in the long album's journey into night.

Lyrically we are led from one piece of broken mirror to the next; only at the recording's end can we see the cracked reflection of love gone wrong that Bono has assembled for us.

AB has another leg up on Sgt. Pepper in its spirituality and rhythm, how U2 anticipate the electronic revolution in pop music, as well as hip-hop's saturation of the later 90's music scene. This does not show U2 as predicting the upcoming trends, but rather how they are artists connected to the vibe of the world itself, unconsciously picking up a wave, and riding it to their next destination. They are so far ahead of their time, and the mainstream, that they aren't even credited with their early forays into these genres. It is because the joining of these sounds to the band's own unique palette is too seamless to notice.

Not to slight the Beatles in any way, but Sgt. Peppers is a whole greater than the sum of its parts--not the band's best collection of individual songs. Imagine experiencing Pepper as being hit in the back of a head with a frying pan, whereas Achtung Baby is a collection of 12 separate painful pins sharply stuck all over your body: they each hurt equally, and in a different place, a different way.

Genius that will not be equalled until next spring, when U2 bless us again with another masterpiece.

1991 surely is a landmark year for rock music. Along with 1967 and 1973 it saw releases of one great album after another. According to me this is not only the year's best but also one of the greatest albums of all time. It is at the same time a pop record and also a rock record. 'Landmark' or 'Pathbreaking' are just some words those does not quite say it all about the importance of this album.

Among the serious U2 fans 'Joshua tree' may be the most tresured album, but consider the everybody under the Sun, 'Achtung baby' will come out as THE favourite. Not surprising for an album having 12 great songs. I really cannot show you one track which is even mediocre. All the songs are great. Now only if you ask me to choose best among greats. I will have to tell you it is possibly 'So cruel' where Bono sings like an angel. This song always send me shivers through the spine. 'Ultraviolet(Light my way)' will come a close second. It has one the best vocal effort effort by Bono in his career.

... And then there are 10 more songs and all of them are so good that I can't decide which will be the 3rd best song. That speaks for sheer consistency U2 achieved with this album. One of the few albums I can listen 24 times a day. I really think The best of U2 1990-2000 should have been a double album with 'Achtung Baby' as Disc 1. So if you still do not have it, don't waste time reading reviews. Get IT. You just cannot not-buy it.

Achtung Baby marked a shift in U2's career path, and a significant risk. Their enormous success due to The Joshua Tree and Unforgettable Fire albums produced a huge and loyal fan base, and one that could have revolted at the warning of a dramatic shift in style. Apparently, however, listeners of U2 are as dedicated to understanding their music as the band is to creating it.

Much has been written about this album, simply because, like all great works of art, it inspires many reactions. My reaction is that this album is important because it proved that U2 could be relevant in arenas previously unexplored by their music. The Amazon review was somewhat accurate in labeling this album as "postmodern," and I think another great adjective would be "murky." Many things can be taken from this artwork, and that's the beauty of it. Much more cerebral in approach than thier earlier efforts, listeners are slowly drawn into the vortex of "Zoo Station," which the band continues to perform live. Bono's voice is deep within the sound of the band, masked by a scratchy reverb. This leads into "Even Better Than The Real Thing," which includes octave seperation of Bono's voice, something he has employed often on U2 records. The initial impression of a new element of depth being added to U2's music is solidly reinforced in the first two songs. "One" is a standout, seen by many as possibly their greatest song. Lyrically it is definitely a gem, and the production stays true to the new musical approach. "Until The End of The World" is an interesting dialogue, and the live version performed on the Boston DVD gives it great perspective. The climax of the album is by far the bittersweet "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses." This song sees Bono finally really letting loose with his voice, and the lyrics are interestingly blunt in the verses, juxtaposing with the very poetic lyrics of the chorus. The jolting moment comes right at the end when he plaintively asks "Who's gonna take the place of me?"
"So Cruel" provides a transitional piece into the second half of the album, leading into more great lyrics and murky musical production. "Love Is Blindness" is a deceptively bitter and intriguing ending, with the mellow music in diametric opposition to the cutting lyrics.
I see this album as the "Revolver" of U2's career. Experimentation was rampant, and with wild success. Most importantly, it ushered U2 into a new era of relevance, success, and musical honesty, which has always been their aim.

Lyrically one can say that this is distinctly a man's record, from a male point of view. The central theme running through the album is that of betrayal, modern man cut adrift and the loss or equalization of power in modern relationships, or better still the fragmentation of relationships in the post modern age. The fact that woman does not necessarily need a man anymore is just unimaginable to him, so he continues to pursue her as if nothing has changed only to stumble and fall every time leaving him confused. He is however prepared to crawl. The record is like a wasteland of sexual ambiguity, littered with sexual innuendo and cruelty. The only track that offers any light has to be Acrobat with a need to keep on trying to love. If Bono is not writing from personal experience then I'm lead to believe that this is his greatest artistic achievement, however The Fly does say that all artists "kill their inspiration and sing about their grief".
Sonically the album is also a rather giant leap for U2. It's not however a complete surprise, evidence of the new sound did start to appear on tracks like God part II in 1988. The most interesting thing though is the new claustrophobic sound of record that clearly has a roof over it's head, rather grimy also, instead of the massive desert expanses of the Joshua Tree. From the sick desperation in the vocal delivery and the industrial tones in the guitar playing one can hear the distinct yearning that man feels for a 'sense' of stability, that is also bourn out also by a rock solid rhythm section. The influence of European industrial music and hip-hop rhythms are clearly felt here.

The sad thing about this record is that I believe it to the last truly great and complete U2 record. It appears that after this they began listening too much to what the critics were saying about the new U2 sound, and the process decided to play it safe by trying to stick to the formula instead of broadening it. I can only say that the last three albums are disappointing affairs to say the least. Achtung Baby however does belong with The Unforgettable Fire as U2's greatest albums. I only wish U2 had put out more records between these two. I estimate that I must have listened to this a least 2000 times.