U2 - War (1983)

Thank goodness. If I have to review another U2 album I'm glad it's from their young and naive days as opposed to their up-their-own-asses days. This one is even earlier than The Joshua Tree, the album that made me realize that U2 really isn't so bad if you can just get past all the pretentiousness. They're even better if you look past all the people who say they're the greatest band in the world and realize that yeah, they can write a pretty solid tune.

Like "Sunday Bloody Sunday." It's got that signature drum pattern and one of those few guitar performances by The Edge (ugh) that feels solid, chunky, and not buried under needless effects. The violin overdubs give this song a nice touch of folksiness, so maybe War will be a much homier album than I'd ever expect to hear from U2.

The second track "Seconds" is a bit troubling. I called the drumming on "Sunday Bloody Sunday" signature, as if the pattern was unique to that track. But "Seconds" have almost the exact same cadence. I hope "Sunday Bloody Sunday doesn't turn out to be the only good idea U2 had for this entire 55-minute album.

"New Years Day" is another popular hit off of this album, and I kinda forgot it existed until just now. Again, it's pleasant to hear The Edge actually playing a solid guitar part as opposed to just playing a riff and relying on sound effects to later spice things up. On the other hand this naked approach pretty much exposes him as pretty one-dimensional and not terribly inventive, especially when he's soloing. On the third hand "New Years Day" is a pretty mellow rocker, so The Edge's talents are actually well suited to this type of song.

Holy crap, "The Refugee" is embarassingly bad. Even for U2. This is just weird. I'll give the band credit for at least attempting to expand their sound a bit. Unfortunately they chose to emulate a britpop band for "The Refugee." The song has everything you'd expect to find in an 80s rocker. I actually wouldn't be surprised at all if this were a cover of a Cindy Lauper song. Actually to make this a Cindy Lauper song all you'd need to do is remove Bono's vocal tracks and replace them with Lauper. "The Refugee" might not be such a departure for U2 considering War is their third album, but it's certainly a departure from the rest of the music on War.

"Red Light" features some confusing overdubs from a twee female chorus (it's a song about prostitution) and jazzy trumpets. It's part of an overall spacier trippy second half of War, which while the themes of the album may be just as serious as they were in "Sunday Bloody Sunday" at least the music isn't as dire. "40" is a pretty weak and lazy closer, which is ironic because I read it was put together because the band felt as though they didn't have a good closing track.

I don't have many complaints about War and kinda like a couple of the songs. Sounds like a 3-star review to me.