October (1981)
U2 is a band known for going all-in with whatever their current interests happen to be. A common trait amongst these lower-ranked albums happens to be not that theyโre weaker musically โ much of October holds up remarkably well โ but that they feel less committed than the bandโs other work. October is an always enjoyable listen, with only a few duds, but itโs very much a transitional work. Perhaps its most distinguishing quality is how prominent a theme their religion had become. Bono, the Edge, and Mullen were all experiencing an increasing fervor in their devotion, which yielded a crisis of faith in their profession. Later in their career, U2โs (or, at least, Bonoโs) struggle with religion would produce some of their most complex and interesting work. With October, the crisis of faith was one of paralysis, leading to an album that didnโt go as far as it could have, while the band tried to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives.
Released, fittingly, in October, U2โs sophomore album followed Boy within a year. As a result, October is in many ways a logical extension of what theyโd done so far, it just plays as a slight alteration rather than an expansion. U2 were still influenced by post-punk, though this time around the occasionally gothy atmospherics of Boy were traded in for something a bit more angular, even if it wasnโt anything quite as sharp-edged as whatโd occur on 1983โs War. Despite receiving the whole deluxe reissue treatment a few years ago, October actually garnered fairly mixed reviews when it was first released. Even so, some fans have come to regard it as a classic of early U2 โ a friend of mine actually claims it as his favorite U2 album โ and the highlights do an admirable job of blending their early post-punk leanings with the growing incorporation of all the tricks thatโd become certified U2-isms as the decade wore on.
The standout is obviously the classic โGloria,โ a song where the band uses a few simple moves to achieve a feeling thatโs every bit as epic as more structurally complicated work from their mid-era albums, and more epic than a lot of their trying-too-hard โ00s would-be anthems. This and songs like โI Fall Down,โ โI Threw A Brick Through the Window,โ and โWith A Shoutโ are actually all examples of moments where the transitional nature of October is pretty interesting. You can hear each member figuring out how to manipulate their instrument to craft the kind of drama the band would become known for, whether it was Bonoโs voice taking on more confidence and shape, Clayton and Mullen beginning to lock into one of the most steadily propulsive rhythm sections out there, or the Edge starting on his path to becoming an absolute master of an unreal range of textures.
Outside of those refinements, some of the other uptempo songs arenโt all that interesting, and the small gestures towards true palette expansion are timid and donโt really go anywhere, such as the piano interlude of a title track and the seemingly interminable first half of โTomorrow.โ When I first got into U2, it was the mid-โ00s and a crop of buzzy indie bands โ particularly Interpol and Editors โ bore a resemblance to the same kind of post-punk these early U2 albums had trafficked in. I feel like this may have contributed to a bit of a revival of interest in this era of U2, which coincided neatly with the bandโs incorporation of a bunch of Boy tracks into the Vertigo tour. This stuff sounded fresh again, and I grew up with the assumption that the only U2 narrative out there was: โ80s were a straight run of classics, โ90s were a big mess after Achtung Baby. That doesnโt really hold up. October isnโt a failure and it has its moments, but itโs also far from the bandโs most interesting work and it doesnโt quite rank among their classics.