By 
The first thing you noticed was the enormity of their smallness. Thanks to the screen towering four stories above them, U2, on this tour marking the 30th anniversary of the release of The Joshua Tree, appeared microscopic on their own stage—a Honey I Shrunk the Rock Stars-level tiny that had Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen, Jr. striding out to challenge the desert sprawl projected behind them with their own wall of sound. Later on in the set, the band would approach the gargantuan monitor and stand before it to signal a shift of power.
When the Irish quartet stood in a row before a blood-red image of one of the knobby gnarls of twigs that dot the national park for which The Joshua Tree is named, it made for a potent silhouette, Bono raising his fist before they hit their marks and performed with miles of highway and the familiar desolation of the American west rolling in the background as they played the album in sequence. The screen became another instrument in their employ, as formidable as Bono's mic or The Edge's guitar.
But before that—when they kicked off the evening with "Sunday Bloody Sunday" from 1983's War, gathering as close as they could get to the grabbing hands of the GA section, a punk nucleus that belonged in a dingy basement instead of a packed stadium—U2 reveled in the very human limits of their size as if to stress their relation to the grand scheme of things and the giantess of what they can create. The Joshua Tree was the centerpiece of the set list and the occasion for a trek that recently wrapped its month-long American leg before embarking on their current European one. "Sunday Bloody Sunday," their furious call for ceasefire in a world gone mad, was a fixture of the original Joshua Tree tour.
It was also a reminder of how U2 are very, very distant from the lads who channeled such fury and determination into a passionate plea for change three decades back, and how badly a 2017 audience could've benefited from their spark.
"Sunday Bloody Sunday" offered a stark contrast to the performance Bono, in particular, delivered on the initial Joshua Tree tour—the one that was captured in Rattle & Hum, the 1988 documentary that followed that journey and the recording of the album of the same name—and a lesson in context and expectations. U2 obviously aren't the same band hitting the road on a continent that shaped the way they wrote, recorded, and played music; they're elder statesmen at this point, and theirs are household names on a global scale thanks to their decades-spanning careers and a smattering of perennial singles that sound current in any context. (The Joshua Tree spawned three of their greatest hits on its top-heavy tracklist: "Where the Streets Have No Name," "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," and the stuff of a thousand slow dances, "With or Without You.")
In front of nothing but their crowd, U2 acted and sounded less like an arena-filling act and more like their scrappier former selves, older bodies housing the same souls that roared through "Sunday Bloody Sunday" 30 years prior in an equally infuriating context—a tight, small outfit that could take on the world by posing a simple question. U2 succeeded in driving home a sentiment that hasn't lost its strength in the lifetimes lived since the first Joshua Tree tour: The more things change, the more they sadly stay the same—and how long must we sing this song begging people to stop killing each other, already? Though the first Joshua Tree tour was mounted under the Reagan administration and their native Ireland was deeply entrenched in the Troubles, that tour plowed through its itinerary as the headlines screeched of casualties of wars that weren't theirs and the political zeal of conservative administrations doing more harm than good. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" struck a painfully relevant chord then, just as it does now.
And though "Sunday Bloody Sunday" made for a rousing kick-off, the rest of their Joshua Tree set didn't quite conduct the intensity of these times into electric moments that inspire the kind of resistance it had in the past. The Joshua Tree tours, both past and present, offer U2 an opportunity to treat them as bookends: The fire that fueled young U2's call to action hasn't gone out, but it smolders under the surface in a way that comforts the listener instead of challenging them, which only disappoints because it feels like a compromise.
Instead of risking the discomfort of their audience to speak their minds as they did in in the '80s, U2, in 2017, opts to focus on reaching as many listeners as possible by relying on that giant screen to do as much of their intellectual work as they did: "Ultra Violet (Light My Way)" was coupled with the beaming female faces of "luminous icons," as Bono called them, from Sojourner Truth to Patti Smith and Hillary Clinton, and "Miss Sarajevo" was tweaked to "Miss Syria" and paired with devastating images from a refugee camp. (A noticeable misstep for the A/V department: The choice to work in shots of the Salvation Army band during "Red Hill Mining Town" was perplexing, as it's difficult to think that U2 would align themselves with an organization with a long history of discriminating against the LGBTQ community.)
Bono made a point to stress that all were welcome at the Joshua Tree tour—even those of a political stripe who would, say, potentially bristle at a 40-foot projection of Clinton's face, or a rant from Bono aimed at this administration's xenophobic, misogynist, and tactless policies—and his banter tripped dangerously close to pandering under the banner of non-partisan connection.
"From the right to the left to those in between, everyone is welcome here tonight," he's been telling crowds across the country. "We'll find common ground reaching for common ground." Instead of taking risks and speaking their minds—which Bono did from the stage in 1987 when he denounced the IRA’s random acts of violence, as Hardeep Phull of the New York Post pointed out—they're more concerned with making sure that they're heard by as many people as possible without alienating those don't align with their humanist ideals. A picture is worth a thousand words, but it appeared that U2 allowed the words we already know from their lyrics and the powerful images behind them do the majority of the intellectual heavy lifting—an impulse the Bono of 1987 would likely reject.
Or would he? In an interview that took place around the first Joshua Tree tour, Bono noted that he didn't think it's his "position to ever used the stage as a soapbox, so I've tried on this record to get across some of our feelings, hopefully in a more subtle and intelligent way, using symbols." Thanks to the massive platform his celebrity and reputation as a liberal, global philanthropist now provides, Bono doesn't really have a choice on this Joshua Tree tour, aversion to tackling political discourse head-on aside. Are we wrong to expect more from the men who stared down the threat of violence for speaking out, especially now? Can we fault U2 for anything when they've delivered on the basest of expectations for the Joshua Tree anniversary, which was to trot out the old stuff, perform it well, and drum up support for their ONE Campaign?
The escapist quality of a rock show is frequently discussed in our current climate, as fans can lose themselves in the music when they buy a ticket and head to the venue. But in this instance, the expectation to head to the venue to confront that which ails us and work through it in the name of rock 'n' roll catharsis is one U2 set themselves 30 years back.
At the end of the day, they're four Irishmen standing before something bigger than themselves. Whether or not they can measure up to the largesse of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and the infinity of a desert skyline isn't the question; why they don't feel the need to is a cause for concern.
