Achtung, Baby! -U2 (1991)


 

A good case could be made for 1991 being one of the better years in music, at least to my taste. I mean,  that was the year of "I Wanna Sexx You Up", wasn't it? 

Achtung, Baby! was U2's seventh studio album, released after a hiatus about about three years, and it saw the earnest, passionately political band of the eighties taking a sharp left turn into a new pop/rock sound that was informed by then-current/cutting edge sounds of Industrial Rock and pop....and also saw the absolute triumph of the group as songwriters. 1987's The Joshua Tree had certainly gone some ways into bringing the pop craftsmanship to the group that their earlier albums had lacked, but Achtung, Baby really displayed the utter mastery of that craft. 

It's also notable that all or nearly all of the albums concern failing relationships, and, I suppose, the roles that humans play in such relationships. 

But it's the sound and music of Achtung, Baby! that really works for me.

Achtung, Baby! saw U2  abandoning the warm Americana-sounds of The Joshua Tree, to embrace what felt like a thorougly cold, gritty European sensibility -- recorded in the only barely post-Cold War decadence of Berlin, West Germany. You can feel the grey skies and brutalist architecture, the gleaming night-clubs and neon scuzz of the city embedded in the music here.

U2 seems to have also been listening to a lot of Madchester sounds at the time, as Larry Mullen's drum beat seem very much in that template, in his words "playing around the beat' than rather keeping the beat. This makes it sound very very nineties, and I mean that in the very best way -- that was the time of my youth and there are days I wish it would come back and I could experience it all over again.

This is one of those albums where every single song is a masterpiece or near masterpiece. There are several albums in my collection that I can say the same about, but this one resonates with me deeply even after thirty years: it is simply put, one of my favorite albums of all time. 

I absolutely love the sound too, echoey, spacious, with the crunching guitars and pounding drums. 

I can't really expres how much Achtung, Baby! meant to me in the early 90s. It simply dominated my world. I loved it. At the time I probably would have included U2 in my favorite all time bands, up there with The Beatles and The Clash.

Perhaps I hadn't listened to enough music back then, or perhaps they really were one of hte best bands now. I'd go hard off htem by the late 90s and the bloated, over-produced but underwritten Pop, and I haven't been much interested in them since, but they really were great and boy did they know how to hype themselves up. But this album really is one of the great albums of a great, great year: 1991. The year I, well.......the year I worked at McDonalds....the year I walked around Springfield with Royce Kitts at night and bitched about it...the year I drank loads of coffee and  read Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac and saw myself as their inheritor and well....kind of a crap year for me overall, now that I think of it. But, you know, the possibilities were endless back then and the future was open.

5/5

Spotify Link:

https://open.spotify.com/album/5n52kyQKeUZs5ObZJejLQd?si=fTT9tmcWSDWMAM98ONeIhA

I've only heard the original master, which is great. The remaster is compressed, I understand and the wonderfullly echoey, Phil Spectorish sound is thus proably squashed sounding: no thank you. One man's muddy is another man's mystery. Why mess with perfection?

Coming Up:

A.M. Wilco

A.T.O.M. - Carbon Silicon

ABBA - ABBA 

ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits

Abbey Road - The Beatles

Achtung, Baby! U2

Actually - Pet Shop Boys

Adult/Child- The Beach Boys

Aerosmith's Greatest Hits

After The Gold Rush - Neil Young

Afterglow - Crowded House

Aftermath (UK Version) - The Rolling Stones

Against The Odds: 1974-1982 Blondie (three disc version)

Aimee Mann Live at St. Ann's Warehouse

Aiming For Your Head - Betchadupa

The Album -- ABBA

The Album That Never Was - The Kinks

All Four One - The Motels

All Over the Place - The Bangles

All Summer Long -- The Beach Boys

All the Great Hits -- Diana Ross

All Things Must Pass -- George Harrison

All This Useless Beauty -- Elvis Costello & the Attractions

All-Time Greatest Hits - Neil Diamond

Alluvium -- Eddie Rayner

Almost Blue -- Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Almost Summer - Celebration

Alpha Mike Foxtrot -- Wilco

The Alphabetchadupa - Betchadupa

Altitude - ALT

American Idiot Green Day

American Prayer -- The Doors

Amnesiac Radiohead

And I Feel Fine...The Best of the IRS years (1982-1987) - R.E.M.

Animals - Pink Floyd

Anodyne - Uncle Tupelo

Another Life - Another Life

Another Music in Another Kitchen: The Buzzcocks

Another Side of Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan

Anthology: Diana Ross & The Supremes

Anthology: Smokey Robinson & The Beatles

Anthology 1: The Beatles

Anthology 2: The Beatles

Anthology 3 The Beatles

Anthology: North South, East West - Tim Finn

Apple Venus: Volume One -- XTC

Apollo 18 - They Might Be Giants

The ArchAndroid: Janelle Monae

Are Well-Respected Men - The Kinks

Armed Forces -Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Around the World in a Day - Prince

Arthur (or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) - The Kinks

At My Piano - Brian Wilson

Autoamerican - Blondie

Automatic for the People - R.E.M.

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