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The Lone Sharks
Nine Lives
Steve Winwood
Moneyland
Various Artists
I'm Not There (Original Soundtrack)
Various Artists
Home Before Dark
Neil Diamond
Toby Keith's 35 BIGGEST Hits
Toby Keith
It's A Shame About Ray (Collector's Edition)
The Lemonheads
About a Son
Otis Blue (Collector's Edition)
Otis Redding
Loaded
Wood Brothers
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U2
Classic Album Review 1987
After a series of albums that continually grew in their emotional complexity and artistic achievement, U2 reached a new pinnacle with The Joshua Tree. Since an album as extraordinarily powerful and complex as The Unforgettable Fire was its predecessor, this represented a monumental achievement. The full force of Bono’s lyrical vision comes into near-perfect focus here, with his penchant for meditative reflection reaching new heights in their ability to convey his restless quest for truthfulness. "I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For" is only one very obvious example of this, and it is only strengthened by the soaring melody, which conveys longing as blatantly as his lyrical poetry. "Bullet the Blue Sky" suggests an uninformed stab at Zeppelin-esque psychedelia, but Bono pulls it off most convincingly, reciting his lyrical creation with true conviction. As if to shut me up and remove any doubts that I may have harbored, "Running to Stand Still" follows up "Bullet the Blue Sky" and is absolutely convincing in its lyrical notions. These words really are poetry.
The sadness of "Running to Stand Still" is emotionally devastating, while the frustration of "With or Without You" is almost tangible in its depiction of losing yourself in another. Normally, I’m a firm believer in conciseness; a song should make its point without droning on and on, but each of the songs on this album is so well conceived and gorgeously wrought that I wish they could have been extended. The production, handled by Flood, is as spacious as the desert that provides a home to the tree referenced in the album title. The second half of the album is only slightly less all-encompassing than the first. "One Tree Hill" relies on the song’s chord progression for emotional impact, but it is still potent enough to cause me to well up, as if my soul was trying to rise out of its cavity in my chest. As the album ends with "Mothers of the Disappeared," the emotional impact is complete. Popular music doesn’t get any more expressive than this.
A+ Tom Ryan
Grade: 
 
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