For the most important album of their post-Joshua Tree career, U2 loaded up on Nine Inch Nails, My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth records, whilst also taking account of rhythmic developments in Manchester and Detroit. The result was an intoxicating brew of hard-edged industrial klang (‘Zoo Station, ‘The Fly’) and funky, danceable grooves (‘Even Better Than The Real Thing’, ‘Mysterious Ways’), that managed the near impossible feat of marrying genuine sonic experimentation to catchy, anthemic melodies.
Lyrically, Bono had switched tack from the widescreen epics of The Joshua Tree to a far more introspective style of brooding melancholia. Sure, irony abounded in the rampant hedonism of ‘Even Better Than The Real Thing’ and the gnomic statements of ‘The Fly’, but as the singer himself subsequently admitted, much of the garish posturing the band indulged in on Achtung Baby was simply to divert attention away from the heart of darkness at the core of the material.
‘One’ was a small miracle of lyrical insight, expressing the contradictory impulses of the human psyche in tender and eloquent fashion. ‘Until The End Of The World’, featuring an absolutely scorching guitar riff from The Edge, related a dark tale of treachery and jealousy that evoked any number of classic betrayal stories.
After the wracked lyrics and trip-hop rhythms of ‘So Cruel’ and ‘Trying To Throw Your Arms Around The World’, the desolate tones of ‘Love Is Blindness’ bought the album to a suitably ambiguous conclusion.