After elevation, vertigo (continued)

It’s tough going, and "Tough" is the word that starts off the "One"-style medium-tempo "Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own," though Bono, in his preachy mode, starts soft. This one, which Bono says he wrote for his dying father, pulses and chimes by turns, modulating with slide guitar for "I know that we don’t talk/I’m sick of it all," the locust wind propping up "You’re the reason why the opera is in me" and "A house still doesn’t make a home." Back to the political front: "Love and Peace or Else" opens with the grim rattle and hum of a wasted no man’s land across which Adam Clayton’s bass gallops like the Four Horses of the Apocalypse while starving children cry before a bluesy Bono enjoins us to "Lay down/Lay your sweet lovely on the ground/Lay your love on the track." The bass booms like 12/8 artillery (in a Blender interview, Adam credits the sound to "Brian" — Eno?) underneath "Lay down your guns/All your daughters of Zion/All your Abraham’s sons" before declaring a "Beautiful Day"-break truce for "Baby don’t fight/We can talk this thing through"; then the bass is back and joined by the Edge oscillating anxiously underneath "Where is the love?" Despite its "Zoo Station" propulsion, "City of Blinding Lights" finds the band less ready to take it to the street, to "a city lit by fireflies" where "They’re advertising in the skies/For people like us." Ready for the deal? "And I miss you when you’re not around/And I’m getting ready to leave the ground" has Bono once again poised between living and levitation; the anthemic rising tide of the band’s "Ooh ooh ooh" seems poised to break into "Gloria" at any moment. Surely this angel will hit the ground for the equally anthemic "Oh you look so beautiful tonight" chorus? Maybe next time: "The more you know the less you feel/Some pray for others steal/Blessings are not just for the ones who kneel luckily."

Another baby’s wail kick-starts "All Because of You," and it’s the Edge’s machine-gun blipping that drives this one rather than Bono’s modestly Dylan-esque lyrics depicting himself as a "child of grace" who "All because of you/I am." "A Man and a Woman" reverts to U2’s strummy Motown mode, with the melody behind the opening "Little sister don’t you worry about a thing today" echoing "I heard the news today" and "I could never take a chance/Of losing love to find romance/In the mysterious distance/Between a man and a woman" recalling both the English lyrics and the tune of the theme from Claude Lelouch’s 1966 French melodrama Un homme et une femme. Bono tries to conjure Dylan and Van Morrison with "Brown-eyed girl across the street/On rue Saint Divine"; the closing "How can I hurt when I’m holding you?", delivered without irony, only reminds you that some songs are indeed better than others. "Crumbs from Your Table" digs back in by piling on the fuzz and the chime, but though Bono starts off in cosmic mode with "From the brightest star/Comes the blackest hole," what follows is only "You had so much to offer/Why did you offer your soul," and neither the "Cool down mama" nor the cryptic reference to "Sister Ann" (Bluebeard?) nor the Roy Orbison imitation on the last word of "Dignity passes by" can take it past the "You speak of signs and wonders/I need something other/I would believe if I was able/But I’m waiting on the crumbs under your table" chorus. As with "When I Look at the World" last time out, it’s the Edge’s guitar breaks that ignite the burning bush.

The gentle "One Step Closer" opens in the Church of the Underwater Christ, with slide guitar standing in for organ and Bono "One step closer to knowing." He doesn’t get any closer than "Well the heart that hurts/Is a heart that beats," but you can hear the distant pounding of the sea in the bass and percussion, and the Edge contributes another wistful break before it all dissolves into something rich and strange. Richer and stranger still, "Original of the Species" is another finger wagger, the band building like Orbison’s "Crying" under Bono’s "Baby slow down/The end is not as fun as the start/Please stay a child somewhere in your heart." Apotheosis reigns nonetheless, as Bono proclaims "You are the first one of your kind" and then falls to his knees as the chorus surges on the chord progressions of "Crying": "And you feel like no one before/You steal right under my door/And I kneel ’cause I want you some more." ("Kneel" is to this album what "ground" and "grace" were to the All That You Can’t Leave Behind/The Million Dollar Hotel complex.) Too bad he gives us passion without the Passion.

"Yahweh" returns us to Joshua Tree territory, Satan tempting Jesus in the desert ("Take this shirt/Polyester white trash made in nowhere/Take this shirt/And make it clean"), Bono asking Yahweh ("Yah-WEH") why there’s always pain before a child is born, why the dark before the dawn. The references to Judas at Gethsemane ("Take this mouth/Give it a kiss") and St. Matthew through John Winthrop and Presidents Kennedy and Reagan ("A city should be shining on a hill") are basic Bono, the "New York"–style shuffle leaves you standing in the station, and "Take this heart/And make it break" isn’t much of a note to end on. The musical line doesn’t exactly fill that God-shaped hole either. And whereas as a title All That You Can’t Leave Behind was charged, How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb seems stuck in a political moment. But this album closes the U2 book on the period of sometimes desperate optimism that Achtung Baby initiated — it’s truly ready for the gridlock. No longer blinded by the light, Bono sings, "I knew much more then than I do now." Well, yes.