U2 GOES POP

U2:"POP"

Island CDU210 524 334-2

(60 mins)

Produced by Flood with additional production by Howie B and Steve Osborne.

Recorded in Hanover, Windmill Lane and Works studios in Dublin, and South Beach Studios in Miami.

Release Date: March 3rd.

IT'S the eleventh hour for U2, as the world waits for the band's eleventh album, POP, emerge into the harsh light of 1997. Will it be a monumental soundtrack for the end of the millennium, or just a monstrous fin de siecle folly, the sound of a band crashing under the weight of its own cargo? More importantly, will it reverse the negative market trend which has seen sales of recent major albums by R.E.M. and Phil Collins take a nosedive?

Recorded in Dublin and Miami over nine months in 1996, POP took a little longer than anticipated to come to fruition, and the grapevine buzzed with tales of uncertainty, indecision and plain in action. When the album's release date was put back from last November, there was much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth in the executive loos of Polygram, but now that it's finally being released (on March 3rd) the hopes of the record industry are hanging on Bono's Batman cape.

In the album glutted 1990s, when ten million selling albums are ten a penny, seldom has a band's work in progress been such a hot topic of discussion, and such a hotbed of rumour and speculation.

The truth, however, is less extreme than any rumour, and U2's new album is, unsurprisingly, a smartly executed hotch potch of ideas and influences, snatched from the multi layered stratosphere of the current music scene, and distilled by U2's hulking, yet still well oiled, four engined turbine. C'mon, you didn't think they called it POP just to be ironic and post modern, did you? Strange as it may seem, they called it POP because that's exactly what it is.

They've given the soul back to Al Green, they've given Berlin back to Eno, and they've given America back to Blur. What they've kept for themselves is a boxful of British dance beats, a pinch of Miami vice, and a strong dose of good ol' U2 salvation. The much vaunted dance direction is not so much a radical move as a neat sidestep into a different rhythmic space, and if you weren't particularly outraged by the remixes of Lemon and Even Better Than The Real Thing, then the depths of your soul won't be too troubled by the trip hop and techno rhythms which feature here.

Rumblings of delays in recording the album may have given the impression that U2 were so desperate to come up with something vital and relevant, that they trip hopped over their own clay feet. What a relief, then, to find that POP is neither self conscious nor simpering, and lacks any suspicion of career panic or middle aged crisis.

The album trundles smoothly and effortlessly from energetic optimism to a kind of downbeat acceptance, moving from the spunky to the spiritual in a dozen diverse moves, and Bono's rawhide and velvet voice ambles along as though he's not in any particular hurry to reach pop heaven this time round.

Nothing less than heaven is of course what we've come to expect from U2, to the point where we seem to consider it our right as citizens of Planet Earth to get only the very best out of them. When they dare to be mediocre, we condemn them for betraying their vision, but when they actually deliver greatness, we often toss it back in their faces and laugh at their supreme arrogance.

U2 owe us nothing, however, and anyone who finds this record disappointing should just stop and think: what do we want from Bono, Larry, Adam and The Edge in 1997? Do we want the same old grand gestures and sweeping statements, or do we want something a little more subtle, flawed and ultimately more honest? If the latter, then POP is as "4 Real" as U2 are ever going to get they've gracefully relinquished their place as forerunners in the hypermarket of pop ideas, standing aside for the hip hoppers, Britpoppers and Techno choppers - and they've taken to their new roles as pop shoppers with relish.

POP track-by-track.

1. Discotheque

You know the opener already - in fact, it ought to be stuck fast on the bedpost of your brain like a tenacious piece of bubblegum. Released as the album's signature single on February 10th, this flight of fanciful dance entered-the UK singles charts at Number One, proving that U2 can still generate a sense of occasion around a new release. This isn't much of an evolution from 1991's The Fly, and Bono sings like he's just swatting around in the hope of hitting a lyrical idea. Concentrate instead on the ferocious beat of Larry Mullen and the crushed glass guitars of The Edge, and picture the tongue in cheek Village People tribute which climaxes the video.

2. Do You Feel Loved

Adam's solid, strident bassline provides a tightrope for Edge's ringing guitar lines, while tribal techno sounds bubble and steam beneath the surface. Bono addresses the thorny issue of sexual politics with submissive lyrics like "Take my shirt go on take it off me/ you can tear it up if you can tie me down," before concluding, "And it looks like the sun/ But it feels like rain/ And there's heat in the sun to see us through the rain." Not quite as direct as Discotheque, but a lot warmer and more comfortable to wear.

3. MoFo

Beneath all the hard techno beats, a harmonica can be heard somewhere deep in the swamp of sound, as Bono searches for salvation among the shrieking keyboards and spiked up effects: "Lookin' in the places where no flowers growl lookin' for to fill that GOD shaped hole." And what's he looking for? The answer comes in the singer's primal scream: "Mother mother suckin' rock `n' roll," while the sequencer rolls along relentlessly in a wired up quest for that elusive, ancestral high. The hardest song on the album, and the one with the softest centre.

4. If God Will Send His Angels.

After the triple whammy of technoid beats and the ten truck pile up of guitars and keyboards, U2 take it down a bit with this gentle, plaintive ballad, a Wim Wenders style theme set in Blade Runner territory. "It's the blind leading the blond/it's the stuff of country songs," sings Bono, over a pointedly picked guitar and a desolate sounding keyboard refrain. The religious imagery gets a bit out of hand, but heaven can be found in the sound as it marches softly towards a small measure of redemption.

5. Staring At The Sun

Could this be U2's riposte to Champagne Supernova, an overt attempt to steal some thunder back from Oasis and regain their rightful place as anthem makers supreme? Staring At The Sun has shades of psychedelia, lazy sunny afternoons watching a Waterloo sunset, and it's as big, bold and Beatlesque as anything Noel Gallagher has ever knocked out. The Edge picks out pictures of matchstick men on his guitar, while Bono sings of "Summer stretching on the grass ... Summer dresses pass . .." A front runner for U2's big Summer 97 hit.

6. Last Night On Earth

Once again, it's the end of the world as U2 know it, and the band is gonna party like it's 1999. The dance beats give way to full on guitar riffs, The Edge getting down and dirty with his toggle switch and whammy bar, and Bono chanting the urgent chorus of "you've got to give it away." Nothing groundbreaking here, then, and even the themes are all too familiar, but this one nicely fulfills the "primary colours" criterion.

7. Gone

Another nearly straightforward rocker, with a piano refrain reminiscent of New Year's Day, except that Bono isn't welcoming the future, but saying goodbye to a faintly gauche past, bidding farewell to former personae with lines like "You can keep this suit of lights/I'll be up with the sun/ And not coming down/ I'm not coming down." Could this be a hint that McPhisto is finally dead and gone, or that Bono the saviour is buried for good?

8. Miami

Things begin to tail off round about here, as U2 start wandering off down some of the backstreets of sound and subject matter.

Miami is a strange, alienated techno blues, a psyched up trip through the decadent panhandle of America's Sunshine State. It's not so much a song as a misguided tour through a crazy cultural backwater, Bono's lyrical handicam taking jerky footage along the way: "I took a picture of you/ getting hot in a photo booth/I said you looked like a madonna/ you said ... maybe ... said I want to have your baby."

9. The Playboy Mansion

We're back in Lovetown territory here, only this time the angel of harlem is replaced by the pinup of Las Vegas, as Bono muses on modern cultural icons like Coke, Michael Jackson, O.J. and Big Macs. The Edge's guitar slides down a metallic elevator, mimicking the showbiz sheen of the lyrics, and the languid beat replicates the numbing ambience of television, cinema and advertising.

10. If You Wear That Velvet Dress

The most downbeat tune on the album opens with some tentative acoustic guitar licks and Bono's sotto voce intonations, before the swooping bass lines cradle the tune in a swathe of twilight sounds and dusky drum brush strokes. There's lots of texture here, but not much in the way of a tune, and the whole effect seems to dissipate, leaving a slight scent of perfume in the air.

11. Please

Still in subdued mood, Bono remonstrates with an imaginary lover about imagined wrongs, begging her to "Please, get up off your knees". The song is steeped in an atmosphere of suppressed sexuality, and The Edge restrains his guitar lines, as though dying to break loose from the chains of repression.

12. Wake Up Dead Man

U2's eleventh album closes on a backdrop of dusty guitars and ghostly chants (courtesy of Le Mystere Des Voix Buigares), as Bono makes a final attempt to catch his breath amid the suffocating weight of the world. "Jesus help me/I'm alone in this world/ And a fucked up world it is too," he states bluntly, before the first minor chord strikes two doom laden beats. While the song makes a fine, epiphanic finale, Bono's muse lets him down a bit on lines like: "Your father, he made the world in seven/ He's in charge of heaven," betraying a Cranberries like penchant for stating the blindingly obvious in a facile rhyme. Luckily, the chorus ends the album on a resurgent note, as U2's spirit trails away beyond the tombstones.