Word: hummingly
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Even on a Sunday night, the crowds are fairly large, filling the barstools and many of the small tables around the perimeter of the room. Smoke, drink, and the smell of food surround the relatively sedate crowds. An occasional burst of laughter breaks the quiet hum of conversation as the 1 a.m. closing call approaches...
This new 12-song collection, the first since the band's Rattle and Hum of 1988, has something in common with all the other good stuff currently in circulation. It has the raucous, free-for-all spirit of the Jukes; it shares the narrative ambition and sense of musical mystery of Storyville (the band collaborated with Robertson, in fact, on a tune on his first album); and it taps into the same deep Irish roots, at once weird and winsome, as does Morrison, who is a kind of godfather to all Irish rockers...
...does something unique here. The band not only reasserts itself but reinvents itself too. After Rattle and Hum, there was some thought that it had overreached itself, gone a little too mainstream, got a little too big even for its own grand ambitions. Achtung Baby restores U2 to scale, and gives the band back its edge...
Thursday: blues duo from Harlem (as seen in U2's "Rattle and Hum") Satan & Adam...
...creation are interspersed with the mysteries of, say, detective stories. The text is often witty, if declamatory, but the real joys of the piece are acoustic and visual. Philip Glass has contributed his customary pulsating music, which has the narcotic effect of nitrous oxide coupled with the distant hum of a dentist's drill, yet is curiously pleasurable. Painter Red Grooms has designed the sets in a sort of Chagall-meets-Grandma Moses style that is, fittingly, both primitive and highly sophisticated. -- W.A.H...