This review has very kindly been written for talku2 by Aviastar who is a member of our forum/online community.
talku2 is very grateful for the review and very proud to publish it….enjoy!
In this heartland…
U2 prove that there is life after The Joshua Tree in Nebraska
“You know you’re gonna end up going”, was my wife’s response to the idea that I might sit out U2’s Experience + Innocence Tour. I am currently juggling a move to a new city, a new job, and graduate school. The expense and time involved in travelling to a show seemed a bit out of reach. Fandom and devotion endures, and I was on Ticketmaster looking for seats after listening to the tour opener. Costs be damned: if they were going to play Acrobat, I was determined to be in the room.
U2 did not book the Twin Cities for this leg of the tour, so a road trip was in the offing. Likely options were Chicago, Saint Louis, and Omaha. Having seen U2 in the first two cities, I turned my attention towards Nebraska, where I found very reasonable upper deck tickets and a hotel room close to the arena.
Rolling across the prairies in a quest for Experience
On concert day, we gassed up our mighty steed (Volkswagen), and traversed the prairies of Minnesota and Iowa to the big O! – a city situated on the bluffs of the muddy Missouri river. Omaha is one of those underdog towns that gets little respect or national attention. But we found much to do: as avid walkers and trail hikers, our first stop after lunch was the city’s Riverfront Heart of America Park and the Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge. Many years ago, fresh out of college with no ambitions or obligations, I worked for the National Park Service mapping decommissioned trails – so I was delighted to find the NPS visitor center, loaded with trail maps and park guides, smack dab in the middle of Omaha!
Getting some exercise and fresh air in downtown Omaha.
After logging some miles on foot, we headed over to the nifty Old Market area of town for pre-show drinks, dinner, and good company on a rooftop patio bar. I spent a good hour trading U2 tour war stories with a guy in an original Outside Broadcast tee-shirt.
A corner patio bar in The Old Market.
We got to our seats ten minutes prior to showtime, and the view was great from the $40 upper deck “cheapies”. The stage setup was very similar to the 2015 Innocence + Experience tour. It was clear that U2 had once again stepped up their tech game as soon as ‘Love Is All We Have Left’ started up. Aside from the AR (which, despite my initial skepticism, was cool), the first three songs really brought life to Songs of Experience. ‘The Blackout’ was heart-pounding and thrilling – the high-definition video board strobed hauntingly between on-screen silhouettes and the actual band. This song was made for live performance.
The band ran through early songs ‘I Will Follow’ and a personal favorite, ‘Gloria’. A quick run through ‘Beautiful Day’ and the band was deep into The Ocean while Bono waxed poignantly about his mother. Songs of Innocence Iris and Cedarwood Road were largely unchanged from the 2015 tour. The band played a sparse rendition of Sunday Bloody Sunday as the catwalk lit up in the tricolor of Ireland while Unionist and Nationalist imagery rolled across the massive screen. This section felt a bit dated, and the song lacked energy it had on the previous tour. A half-hearted attempt at drama with a simulated car-bomb didn’t really go anywhere but led into a very strong performance of ‘Until the End of the World’ before intermission.
I’ve never had any affection for ‘Hold Me, Thrill Me, yadda, yadda…ad infinitum’, but I’ll just note that the accompanying video was interesting. The band was back on stage in short order with boilerplate renditions of ‘Elevation’ and ‘Vertigo’ which had casual fans on their feet. Bono and co. launched into a very worthy rendition of ‘Desire’ after some clever quips – and by this point I was in a groove. What followed next was some dialogue that is perhaps too clever by half. Bono’s devil-face filter didn’t quite work, and Mr. MacPhisto is a lot less subtle (and perhaps a bit goofier) than his early 90s incarnation. Still, it was a fun romp down memory lane as the band started in on ‘Acrobat’. The song works in a live setting, no doubt – Edge’s solo was phenomenal. Larry is powerful on the 12/8 beat and I was on my feet, belting out the lyrics. Casual fans leaving their seats to buy more jumbo sodas didn’t bother me too much. I wasn’t going to let the bastards grind me down, such as it were. As far as I was concerned, the band was playing this song for me. It did not disappoint.
My wife remarked that any life had been stripped out of ‘You’re the Best Thing About Me’ with an acoustic version that would be appropriate in a Club Med Tiki bar. She’s right – the song is just not musically interesting enough in this context, and sounds half-baked when played acoustically. It’s a snoozer. Larry’s conga act ought to have been paired with cabana wear. ‘Staring at the Sun’ worked much better in this format, but Bono managed a dig at the Pop album by tossing it off as U2’s “psychedelic” period. I’m no disciple to the book of Pop, but it features some powerful and criminally neglected rock songs (‘Please’, ‘Gone’…). ‘Staring’ was interspersed with video of current-day white supremacist rallies that are both grotesque and chilling. This led into a surprisingly fresh rendition of Pride (In the Name of Love), which ended with a very worthy MLK tribute.
Pride (In The Name of Love)
‘Get Out of Your Own Way’, a song which I do enjoy – was well performed if not particularly noteworthy. It was easy to notice the canned vocal track for the choruses – one of the few times at a U2 show where I was very aware of accompaniment. U2 bombastically delivered ‘American Soul’, replete with oversized American flags, megaphones, and not one, but two Refujesus callouts. The main show closed with a workmanlike rendition of ‘City of Blinding Lights’ that featured shots of downtown Omaha on the video screen.
The encore kicked off with the canned rendition of ‘One’ – or shall we call it ‘Red’ by this point? I can probably recite Bono’s AIDS Activist speech in my sleep. ‘Love Is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way’ is a song I’m not incredibly keen on – but it worked well live and was a fun sing-along. Bono memorialized victims of the shooting at Santa Fe High School, and sang a subdued ‘13 (There is a Light)’ in tribute. It was a touching end.
The Experience + Innocence show, like its companion tour, incorporated a lot of new material. I think this speaks well of the band – they are not merely trotting out one warhorse after the next, and are committed to their new work. I think the show could stand to drop either ‘Vertigo’ or ‘Elevation’, swap in ‘Red Flag Day’, and add some real punch to ‘Best Thing’. The Experience + Innocence setlist requires a more intimate knowledge of the band, and I heard more than one complaint about the lack of JT hits. Casual fans may walk away a little disappointed, but I think the song selection made for a much more interesting show – and made me appreciate Songs of Experience even more. Regardless of how you feel about the new material, I would hazard to guess that nearly all U2 fans would find this concert worth the price of admission.
Notes:
The show provided some notable personal firsts:
•It hardly needs to be said: ‘Acrobat’.
•This was my first live experience with songs from Pop (‘Staring At The Sun’) and Rattle & Hum (‘Desire’). I have now seen at least one song from every studio album in concert.
•This is my first U2 concert in which ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ wasn’t played. ‘Pride (In The Name of Love)’, ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, ‘One’, ‘Beautiful Day’, and ‘Elevation’ remain the only songs played at every concert I have attended.
•This my first experience with The Ocean – and only the second song from Boy that I have heard live.
Aviastar – talku2 forum member.
