1991 U2: The Fly

"I was explaining to people the other night, but I might've got it a bit wrong – this is just the end of something for U2. And that's what we're playing these concerts – and we're throwing a party for ourselves and you. It's no big deal, it's just – we have to go away and ... and dream it all up again." So voiced Bono to a Dublin audience at the end of a live show in December 1989 to provide a 'Ziggy Stardust-like statement of dramatic intent (Bono was never one to miss a trick) that the things were going to change. And to initiate that change, the band, with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois in tow, duly decamped to Berlin's Hansa Studios to record the next album. 'The Fly' was the first official release from those sessions.

A chunk of abrasive noise hitched to a lolloping industrial beat, the change was self evident; there were acres of space between 'The Fly' and their eighties output and my initial surprise at hearing 'the new U2 single' was genuine. Increased familiarity however reveals it to be more akin to U2 MK1 than the work of a 'different' band, albeit U2 MK1 as played underwater. And that deceit is down to the hand of Lanois - instead of their usual pitter patter, the guitars now gurgle and bubble over a drunken thump of a hip hop on crutches drum pattern while Bono's stretched, metallic vocal comes filtered through a snorkel tube as he phones home a soundbite lyric stuffed with observations about everything and nothing. In short, nothing really that the band hadn't already essayed in 1998 on 'Rattle And Hum's 'God Part 2'.

Ok, so at heart 'The Fly' doesn't shatter the U2 mould as much as it might lead you believe, but it does crack it, and the biggest crack comes via Bono's own doubletracked, low key falsetto ("Love...we shine like a burning star. We're falling from the sky") on the chorus that acts as counterpoint to his dominant rasp elsewhere; it sweetens the distortion to perhaps give the biggest indication that U2 had left the macho 'rock and roll' mythos of Joshua Tree/Rattle And Hum behind to take a leap in the dark proper. I'm no fan of U2 and in truth the parent 'Achtung Baby' is one of the few albums of theirs I can listen to all the way through, but in saying that I've never found 'The Fly' to be one of its highlights. Once that trying just a bit too hard non-code has been cracked, then it quickly runs out of things to say, and the sound that remains does not reward repeated plays once the initial surprise has worn off. Interesting, but it would lead to better things.