The Surface Of Things

U2 @ Madison Square Garden 7/30/2015
The Miracle (of Joey Ramone) / The Electric Co. / Vertigo / I Will Follow / Iris (Hold Me Close) / Cedarwood Road / Song for Someone / Sunday Bloody Sunday / Raised by Wolves / Until the End of the World / [The Fly intermission] / Invisible / Even Better Than the Real Thing / Mysterious Ways / Elevation / Ordinary Love / Satellite of Love / Every Breaking Wave / Bullet the Blue Sky / The Hands That Built America -> Pride (In the Name of Love) / Beautiful Day / With or Without You // City of Blinding Lights / Mother and Child Reunion (with Paul Simon) / Where the Streets Have No Name / One

• This is my site and I paid to see this show, so I’m going to allow myself to be petulant about this: I am very disappointed that I managed to see the two shows of an eight show residency that had nearly identical setlists. There are four to five spots in the setlist for this tour where U2 rotate in different songs, and though they’ve been mixing it up over the past several nights in NYC, only one of those spots included a song that was not played on the first night – a cover of Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love.” I do not care about “Satellite of Love.” It’s hard not to feel bitter about paying a lot of money for this show and knowing that the other nights had truly exciting things played in these rotation spots – “Bad,” “All I Want Is You,” “Desire” with Jimmy Fallon, “Angel of Harlem” with The Roots, “Two Hearts Beat As One,” “Gloria,” “Out of Control,” “Sweetest Thing,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” But nope, I get “Ordinary Love” – one of the worst songs of their entire career! – for a second time, and another half-hearted performance of “One” in which Bono has the audience sing 80% of the song. I suppose Paul Simon coming out in the encore is theoretically exciting, but he was so awkward and in such bad voice that it was not exactly an exciting moment. Siiiiiigh.

• U2 were very on when I saw them on the first night of this residency, but this show felt like they were just doing their job. I could tell that Bono’s voice was a little worn out in spots, and he seemed a little tired. They’re such pros that they give a lot even when they’re not in top form, so it was hardly a weak performance. Really, I might not have fully noticed that the energy was a bit lower if I hadn’t seen them play with such fire in the recent past.

• The audience for this show, or at least all the people in my vicinity, were not good. U2 shows feed off the energy of the audience, and are improved by the audience’s participation in the big sing along moments in songs like “Pride” and “Where the Streets Have No Name.” I was surrounded by people who seemed entirely unwilling to participate or in any way visibly react to the music, and it dragged down my experience of the show. I have no idea why these people went to see this – it’s kinda expensive, and a lot of the reason you go to see U2 is to be part of this communal experience. It sucks to see them play “Pride” and have maybe 20% of the audience tops participating in the “oh oh oh ohhhh” part when you know first hand how transcendental it feels to be there when 80% of the audience is doing it.

• Midway through the show, Bono introduced the audience to the emergency workers who saved him after his severe biking accident in Manhattan last year, and to the woman who made the 911 call when everyone else in the vicinity of the crash were simply gawking at the scene. Bono let the woman tell her story for a couple minutes, and she made the huge mistake of making a snide remark about NYC, so she ended up getting loudly booed for almost all the time she was speaking. It was really something to see the woman who arguably saved Bono’s life – or at least his career as a performer – get booed by thousands of U2 fans.

• I don’t really have much to add about the songs or the staging, but I did notice that there’s spots in the show that don’t seem to work for the audience, even if they work on a thematic level. “Iris” doesn’t seem to connect at all, and everyone seems very confused by the intermission/”Invisible” sequence. I like that part, so it’s especially disappointing that the majority of the arena barely responds to it. Most of the arena didn’t even stand up for it. “Ordinary Love” is another song that doesn’t work at all, and the piano version of “Every Breaking Wave” is another moment that people take as a cue to sit down for a few minutes. That said, I think “The Miracle,” “Raised by Wolves,” and “Cedarwood Road” go over pretty well, or at least as well as you could expect for tracks from a new record that is mostly either maligned or ignored.