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Album reviews Music

U2

Rating: NNN


For all the PR acrobatics (Bono doling out pizza on a truck in NYC?) around the release of How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, it’s neither earthshaking nor album of the year. Bono and the lads are really only as good as their production team, and when it’s good – Flood’s hints of post-punk synth-styled broodiness on City Of Blinding Lights, Lanois and Eno souping up Adam Clayton’s sluggish Tainted Love bassline and the Edge’s caterwauling blues riffs with echoing atmospherics on Love And Peace Or Else – the results can be magnificent. But stalwart Steve Lillywhite sticks close to the safe college-rock/anguished-yelp template, and aside from the nü-garagey bombast of lead track (and first single) Vertigo, the rest of the disc offers a tame array of arena-ready lighter ballads. For better or for worse, it’s paradigmatic U2, in all their anthemic glory.

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