Achtung Pollby

idk I do buy "bullet the blue sky" on AB (tho i don't know the rest of the earlier albums besides the singles). seems like the case is being made for a revolver->pepper's progression, where the band is unquestionably exploring new sonic ground, and the handful of songs that could have belonged to the earlier moment (critics later realize) are camouflaged by a major new look/concept/gimmick that makes it feel like *everything* must have changed...

I dunno, I kind of think everything *did* change. Which is not the first time the band did that - Unforgettable Fire sounds radically different from War and the entire first run, Joshua Tree is pretty radically different from Unforgettable Fire - but I think Achtung Baby was the first time everyone in the band really changed things up at once. Bono's singing is for the first time not just less histrionic but more playful, Larry's drums are not at all martial but dancier but definitely loopier and groovier than he'd been (and he switched to a cranked up snare), Adam's bass is dubbier and, to my ears at least, it's really the first time the Edge seems to be writing around a particular effect for each track. Even on the weirder moments of the previous albums he still had a pretty consistent sound, echo and delay and a bit of distortion and all that. But his toolbox greatly expands with this one, from the first sound we hear to stuff like the (phase?) effects in "Mysterious Ways." It's just a wholesale change in sounds *and* attitude, no longer strident and militant, maybe more ... personal? I think the crowning achievement of the band is that for all of its big changes this far along in a massively successful career, *this* suddenly became the sound of U2, even if people still talk chiming delay pedals and Bono histrionics.

yeah, otm !
Bass&Drums sound completely different from previous stuff.
Lots of sound FX/distorted instruments throughout the album (including on guitars and vocals).
I just listened to "Bullet the Blue Sky" to make sure and it definitely sounds NOTHING like ANYTHING on AB/Zooropa. There's no way it could have been on these albums.

They dialled down the reverb on the drums and Edge got a new set of effects, but the songs - at their core - are very recognisable as U2 songs, so I can see what mookieproof is getting at.

Zooropa is where they really start pushing the boat out. 'Lemon' and 'Numb' are barely recognisable as U2. The former feels like Bono guesting on someone else's record.

Except for the bass and drums, which are very much in contemporaneous character. What sets both of those songs apart really is the practical absence of guitar. If there's guitar in Lemon (from memory), it is very well disguised. And the guitar in Numb is so distorted and weird it is functionally just another synthesizer.

Numb was a really bold choice for a first single for those reasons as well as the fact that The Edge is the lead vocalist, Bono is relegated to the "too much is not enough" part, and Larry sings the "i feel numb". It removes all the comfortable elements from a typical U2 song and inserts some jarring ones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvX596FyX40

this is legitimately the weirder one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZImRY8Wgtk

'Lemon' does indeed have guitar on it - those shimmering chords you hear right from the beginning of the song are all Edge's guitar, not a keyboard or synth.

Maybe! But my "Numb" point still stands in that they are functionally not identifiable as guitars. I mean, the drums could be all triggered by guitars for all it really matters.

(Speaking of guitars, I always thought the mood-setting four-note chiming pattern that starts "With or Without You" was a guitar, but on close exploration with a friend we determined it's massively awkward to play on guitar and then learned that it's actually a synth pattern.)

Nobody was arguing your 'Numb' point!

Yeah, that fast pattern at the beginning of 'With or Without You' is sequenced.

I was listening to "Miss Sarajevo" and some other Passengers songs lately and these are so good. E
specially considering how a U2 / Pavarotti political track about Sarajevo and war could/should have been atrocious !
The Pavarotti part which could have been an ott disaster is so moving.
Between Achtung Baby and Passengers, they were basically on fire creatively.
And the best songs from that time were so different from their sound ("The Fly", "The Wanderer", "Miss Sarajevo"...).