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The Herald Sun JUNE 1, 2017 - by Cameron Adams

U2: THE JOSHUA TREE

U2 fans still haven't quite found what they're looking for - if anything really rare from The Joshua Tree sessions exist. Maybe the band exhausted their vaults for the twentieth anniversary reissue of their classic 1987 album. This thirtieth anniversary release doubles up on the vintage outtakes and B-sides (including The Sweetest Thing, which later became a recycled hit) first heard a decade ago. There's a few selling points for the new deluxe versions: a triumphant live concert from 1987 with Pride, 40, MLK, I Will Follow, Party Girl and Sunday Bloody Sunday as well as Joshua Tree future classics. There's a more ragged alternate take of I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For from Steve Lillywhite, which isn't dramatically different from the hit version. The big changes come in the new remixes of old material by key people in the U2 orbit.

Daniel Lanois turns With Or Without You into Radiohead, circa Amnesiac. The big rock "kick" is gone, replaced by esoteric electro ambience and different backing vocals and it uses Bono's voice to drive the song, not the band. Lanois also reinvents Running To Stand Still, Lillywhite gives Red Hill Mining Town some new bells, whistles and brass, and Brian Eno serves up a short reprise of One Tree Hill. Jackknife Lee updates Bullet The Blue Sky without losing any of the original urgency - creating an epic with electronic undertones in all the right places. Flood's Where the Streets Have No Name is potentially divisive: the original version bookends a moody, distorted middle - more Gothic church than rock stadium. But it does have has different lyrics - Bono sings "Where the streets have no love" in parts and there's alternate ad libs which will prick up fan ears... and empty fan wallets. Again.