Reviews
 Keep It Simple
Van Morrison
Roger McGuinn @ the Huntington IMAC, Long Island, NY - April 4, 2008
Emily Saxe @ the Allen Room/Jazz at Lincoln Center - April 5, 2008
Another Country
Tift Merritt
Be Your Own Pet
Get Awkward
Paul McCartney – The McCartney Years (DVD)
Juno – Music from the Motion Picture
Various Artists
Yes - Their Definitive Story
Day and Night Driving
Seven Mary Three
InterMedia Arts Center 2/2/08
Huntington, NY
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U2
All of a sudden, rock and roll’s most honest and sincere rock band decided to be duplicitous. It was confusing, frustrating and ultimately fascinating. To disguise his penchant for wearing his heart on his sleeve, Bono instead took to wearing wraparound ‘fly’ shades. In the process, we all learned that invoking mystery can be even more revealing than shouting out diatribes and preaching doctrine. Singing some of the most personal and sensitive music of his career, much of it inspired by guitarist Edge’s impending divorce, U2 made the emotional turmoil of their music that much more effective by forcing us to question their intention. Were they being sarcastic or sincere? Judgmental or indifferent? Angry or amused? By avoiding the stridency of their previous work and burying it in artifice, they managed to make one of rock and roll’s most challenging records. Few songs have the emotional impact of "Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses," a song that captures the lonely, empty feeling of abandonment, leaving little space for escape and even less for hope. A U2 song that doesn’t convey a sense of hope? Like I said, Achtung Baby was a different animal and it broadened the band’s palette enormously.
The production of Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois complements the corrosively divisive mood of the songs by bathing them in atmospheres as large as space itself. Although the album’s lyrics can hit as hard as a punch to the gut, the production allows the listener room to breathe. One listener might revel in the megalomaniacal attitude of the band’s revised image and see nothing but artifice. Another may choke on their pain, and struggle to hold back the tears. Either interpretation works, and either is equally valid. It isn’t easy to walk such a fine line, and even U2 eventually found that such a balance would eventually grow wobbly (check out 1997’s Pop if you need evidence). For a while, though, they were masters of the tightrope, balancing themselves between the overt sincerity of their past and the confused overload of possibilities and interpretations posed by their future. At this moment, they were no longer just a great rock and roll band; they were also the most challenging rock and roll band to come along in ages.
Grade: 
 
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