The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
U2 · Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen Jr. · produced by Steve Lillywhite · Island · ten tracks, about 42 minutes
Mode
Post-punk rock turned toward the anthem, the march and the hymn; a dry, hard sound built around a military drum
Mythos
A lament that becomes a psalm, built across the first song and the last; the drowning man and the hand held out, the refugee, the red light and Easter after the killing evoked
Phase
Ten tracks, five to a side; public war at the start, a plea answered at the close of side one, the city and the self on side two, a psalm at the end
Presentation
Album; ten tracks, five to a side, about forty-two minutes; violin on two tracks, horns or added voices on two
Register
Earnest and declarative; march, anthem, love song, plea, chant and hymn, the voice reaching by release and by strain in a dry, close room
Scale
A street in Derry, the bomb, a couple at the turn of a year, a city at night, a psalmist waiting
Governing Proposition
Four Dublin musicians strip the echo from their first two records, build a dry, hard sound around a military drum, and sing a refusal over it: a record of war, public and private, that answers violence not with victory but with surrender of the self. It opens on a massacre and closes on a psalm, and the same question stands in both.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record begins with a drum. A military figure, dry and close, stands at the front of the sound; a violin enters against it; and only then comes the voice, which refuses what the drum is doing. Over a beat that marches, the song declines to march. It names a killing and will not take up the call to answer it. The title is the name of the killing in Derry, and the record opens by setting the war it is itself named for. Before any argument is made in words the form has made it: the music marches while the words decline to, and that contradiction is the record’s way of knowing its subject.
The band had made two records before this, Boy (1980) and October (1981), in an echoing post-punk sound that came down from Joy Division and Television. Here the echo is taken away. Steve Lillywhite gives the four players a dry, close, hard room, at Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin in 1982. Larry Mullen Jr.’s drum moves to the front as a military figure, Adam Clayton’s bass carries weight, and The Edge’s guitar turns harder and more economical, keeping its chiming for the moments of lift. The sound of the whole is a war sound, and the record knows its subject through it, not only through what it says.
The refusal had a stake. An Irish band put its name to a song about Bloody Sunday when such a song could be heard as a rebel song by the very people it refused, and when the post-punk around it ran on irony, style and distance. The turn toward the explicit and the earnest was the record’s wager. The song turns at its end toward Easter, a Christian answer to a sectarian war fought under Christian names, and toward the question “how long”, which the record will ask again at its close. It has since sustained decades of argument about the protest song and about who may sing of such killings, and the band has reworked its meaning in performance ever since.
Movement II
Seconds turns the war global and makes it instant: the bomb, and the time it takes to “say goodbye”. The song discloses the ease of annihilation in a phrase, and that is its method and much of the record’s: statement. Like a Song..., which follows New Year’s Day, refuses rebellion worn as fashion, an argument the record needs, but its music restates the opener’s attack at greater noise and strives without lifting. Both songs are clear. Once their meaning is heard, little more opens, and the record’s habit of naming its subjects outright shows in them at its plainest.
What the record discloses can be put in a sentence, and it is a meaning, not a mood: the militant cause is itself a trap, a song about political killing can refuse the battle call it describes, and the answer to war, public or private, is surrender of the self rather than victory. That holds forty-three years on. But much of it is said as slogan and banner rather than uncovered. The record states what it knows more often than it brings it into the open, and its words are direct by design, which leaves the depth of meaning at the front of the songs, where one hearing finds most of it.
The directness was the point. At a moment when the post-punk around it kept its subjects at a distance, the record named a massacre, the bomb and its own faith without irony, and set them in a rock built to carry to the back of a large hall. Its forms remained rock forms: verse and chorus, drum and guitar, and a political song that the Clash had already cleared for rock. The departure was from the band’s own first records and from the irony of its moment more than from the tradition it inherited, and the stake, though real, was placed on ground others had opened.
Movement III
New Year’s Day carries the war into a love song. A bass figure of near-mechanical insistence runs under a voice singing of love held inside a political emergency, and the method of the opener returns: an engine that will not change beneath a voice that pleads. The song rises twice, on the piano figure under the chorus and in the guitar break, where The Edge’s playing turns hard and bright under a “blood red sky”. It is one of the two songs through which the record is chiefly known, and it holds the record’s central contradiction in its most compact form.
Adam Clayton’s bass is the song’s making. It rewards close listening, as the drum parts across the record do, and it is the clearest case on the record of an instrumental idea bearing the weight of the meaning: the insistence is the emergency. The making elsewhere is rougher. The singing reaches its heights by strain as often as by release, several lyrics are stated rather than made, and the arrangements of the second side are plainer than those of the first. The craft is load-bearing in three or four songs, and this is one of them; across the whole it carries less.
The song’s later life is the record’s. New Year’s Day and Sunday Bloody Sunday have been continuously present since release, on the radio, in the band’s concerts and in any account of the political song, and the album is known chiefly through them. It remains their home, whole and heard in order, ten tracks in the sequence set. The dry drum and bright guitar of its production are now heard as period, and so is much of its topical ground, the Troubles and the nuclear fear of the early 1980s. Sunday Bloody Sunday has outlived the conditions that made it; the record as a whole is held to its moment more closely.
Movement IV
Drowning Man closes the first side, and it is the record’s one plea answered. A long, floating vocal over acoustic strum and violin, it holds out a hand to a drowning man, “take my hand”, and the hand is grace. It is the warmest height on the record, close to transport, and its best-made track: every part legible and serving the voice, the violin used with restraint. Without it the close in “40” would have nothing to stand on. The first side, from Sunday Bloody Sunday to Drowning Man, survives the subtractive test almost whole.
The second side is where cuts come easily. The Refugee is a thin chant on a pounding figure. Two Hearts Beat as One is a good single whose place is permitted, not compelled, and its dance beat sits at the edge of the record’s sound. Red Light, with trumpet and added voices, adds colour and little argument. Three songs could go with small loss, and with Like a Song... restating the opener, the record’s necessity rests on six of its ten. In these songs the form that elsewhere carries what the record knows becomes a container for it: another form would lose little of what they say.
These songs also test the record’s law. One law governs most of it: war, public or private, answered by surrender, in a hard sound that marches. Red Light, a song of the city coloured by funk, is the element furthest from the opener’s lament. In theme it obeys, carrying the war inward to the lost in the city; in sound it obeys only in part. Nothing breaks the law, but two songs strain it. The orders the record reaches here, the couple, the city and the displaced, are present and touched by its frame more than held by it.
Movement V
Surrender lifts in its last minute, the record’s turn from public war to the surrender of the self, set in a city at night. Then “40”, a hymn sung low and repeated, setting words from Psalm 40, and the question of the opening returns. “How long” was the cry of a people at war in the first song; in the last it is the waiting of the psalmist. That frame is the record’s one built myth: a lament that becomes a psalm, carrying ten songs from a street in Derry to the voice of scripture. The rest of its figures, the drowning man, the refugee, the woman in the red light, are named and evoked, not built.
The close stayed. “40” was for years the song with which the band ended its concerts, and the earnest, drum-led anthem the record set became a manner in the rock of the 1980s. The record made the band an international force. Part of that reach belongs to the band’s later and larger records: the next of them, The Unforgettable Fire, which stands at 8.4, turned toward atmosphere where this record had stripped it away. War showed that a post-punk band could take on the largest public subjects of its moment without irony and make them carry; the means, the drum and guitar of rock, the anthem and the hymn, were already known.
The record holds more orders than most rock albums: the state and its violence, the bomb, the sacred, the couple, the city and the displaced, joined by one frame and held together most fully where the sacred and the political meet, in the first song and the last. It is raw where the band’s later records are refined, load-bearing in a few songs rather than throughout, and its statements are often banners. But its central contradiction, a march sung against itself, is made in sound, and its frame bears load. It is a serious record that has lasted, and it ends where it began, asking “how long”.
Act III · The Twelve
Ten tracks, five to a side, and the first side survives the subtractive test almost whole. Sunday Bloody Sunday must open, since it sets the war the title names and the refusal the record makes; Seconds makes that war instant; New Year’s Day carries it into a love song; Drowning Man is the one plea answered by grace, without which the close has nothing to stand on. Like a Song... is required in argument, but its music restates the opener’s attack at greater noise. On the second side cuts come easily: The Refugee is a thin chant, Red Light adds colour and little argument, and Two Hearts Beat as One is permitted, not compelled. Three songs could go and a fourth repeats; the cap is met by a tenth.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and it is a meaning, not a mood: the militant cause is itself a trap, a song about political killing can refuse the battle call it describes, and the answer to war, public or private, is surrender of the self rather than victory. Sunday Bloody Sunday sets this in its form, a martial drum with a refusal sung over it, and turns at its end toward Easter, a Christian answer to a war fought under Christian names. Seconds discloses the ease of annihilation. What holds the figure is the manner: much is stated as slogan and banner rather than uncovered, and the private songs of the second side add little the record has not already said.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Elevation comes often and is of one kind, the anthemic lift, sometimes cold and martial, sometimes warm. The opening drum of Sunday Bloody Sunday, with the violin entering against it, is a real height of terror and grief. New Year’s Day rises twice, on the piano under the chorus and in the guitar break. Drowning Man is the warmest height, a long floating vocal over acoustic strum and violin, close to transport, and “40” ends the record in plain grace; Surrender lifts in its last minute. Against this, Like a Song... and The Refugee strive and shout without lifting, and the voice reaches its heights by strain as often as by release. Height and frequency are both real, and both are bounded.
Score: 8.1 / 10
The archetypes are evoked everywhere: war and peace, the drowning man and the hand held out, the refugee, the woman in the red light, the psalmist waiting, Easter after the killing. One of them is built. The record is framed as a lament that becomes a psalm: “how long” is asked in the first song as the cry of a people at war and again in the last as the waiting of Psalm 40, and the frame bears load, carrying the record from a street in Derry to the voice of scripture. It is one structure, and it holds only at the two ends. The middle songs evoke rather than build: the drowning man, the refugee and the red light are figures named, not structures that carry the record.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The inheritance is post-punk: Joy Division, Television, the echoing guitar the band had used on Boy and October, and the political punk of the Clash. The turn is toward the explicit and the earnest, when the post-punk around it ran on irony and distance: the echo stripped out for a dry, martial sound, the drum moved to the front, violin, horns and dance rhythm let in, and songs that name their subjects and a faith the band does not hide. The stake was real: an Irish band put its name to a song about Bloody Sunday that could be heard as a rebel song by the people it refused. What holds it is the ground: the forms are rock forms, and the political song in rock had been cleared by the Clash.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Change the form and the record loses part of what it knows, because its central knowledge is set in a contradiction between sound and word: a drum that marches and a voice that refuses to march. Sunday Bloody Sunday is the purest case, and New Year’s Day repeats the method, a bass figure of near-mechanical insistence under a love song sung in crisis. The dry, close sound of the whole is a war sound. The sequence argues: public war at the start, private surrender in Surrender, the psalm at the end, the question binding first to last. What holds it is that the method lives fully in two songs, and The Refugee, Two Hearts Beat as One and Red Light are songs in containers.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Evidence first, and forty-three years of return supply it, concentrated in a few songs. Sunday Bloody Sunday has sustained decades of argument about the protest song and about who may sing of sectarian killing, and the band has reworked its meaning in performance since. New Year’s Day and “40” return well, and the drum parts and the bass of New Year’s Day reward close listening. The rest yields less on return, because its method is statement: once the meaning of Seconds or Like a Song... is heard, little more opens, and the private songs of the second side have drawn no sustained attention of their own. Semantic depth is front-loaded, and the album is returned to as the frame of three or four songs.
Score: 7.7 / 10
The field is the rock album of the 1980s. The record showed that a post-punk band could take on the largest public subjects of its moment, sectarian killing and the nuclear threat, with no irony at all, and make them carry as arena rock; it fused post-punk drum and guitar with the anthem and the hymn, and set faith inside rock without the forms of Christian music. That is a real enlargement of what the decade’s rock could claim, not a reorganisation of possibility: the means were known. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the record made the band an international force, and its big, earnest, drum-led anthem became a manner in the decade’s rock. Part of that reach belongs to the band’s later and larger records, and it is discounted.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Survival is weighed on form, presence and fabric, over forty-three years. The recording survives whole, ten tracks in the order set, with nothing lost. Sunday Bloody Sunday and New Year’s Day have been continuously present since release, on radio, in the band’s concerts and in any account of the political song, and “40” stayed for years as the band’s close. The album as a whole is narrower in presence: the second side is little heard, and the record is known chiefly through its singles, though it remains their home and is still heard in order. The dry drum and bright guitar are of their moment, and the Troubles and the nuclear fear of the early 1980s are now heard as period, though the opener has outlived the conditions that made it.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The making is load-bearing in places and rough in others. Steve Lillywhite gives the band a dry, close, hard room. Larry Mullen Jr.’s drumming is the record’s engine and signature, the military figure of Sunday Bloody Sunday its most famous single idea; Adam Clayton’s bass carries New Year’s Day; The Edge’s guitar is harder and more economical than before, its chiming kept for moments of lift. Drowning Man is the best-made track, every part legible. Against this, the singing often reaches by strain, several lyrics are stated rather than made, and the arrangements of The Refugee and Red Light are crude beside the first side. The making carries three or four songs, not the whole: well under Boxer at 8.6, a making legible throughout.
Score: 8.0 / 10
One law governs most of the record: war, public or private, answered by surrender, in a hard sound that marches. The two most distant elements are Sunday Bloody Sunday, the public lament, and Red Light, a song of the city coloured by funk, trumpet and added voices. In theme they largely obey one law, since Red Light and Surrender carry the war inward to the lost in the city. In sound they obey it only in part: the funk of Red Light and the dance beat of Two Hearts Beat as One sit at the edge of the record’s physics. The march and the hymn at either end are joined by the repeated question. Nothing breaks the law; two songs strain it, and the strain holds the figure.
Score: 7.7 / 10
Judged on what the record holds. Many orders are present: the state and its violence in Derry, the bomb in Seconds, the sacred in the psalm, Easter and Drowning Man, the couple in New Year’s Day and Two Hearts Beat as One, the city and its lost in Red Light and Surrender, the displaced in The Refugee. One frame, war answered by surrender, joins them, and the sacred and the political are genuinely held together in Sunday Bloody Sunday and “40”. What holds the figure is integration: the couple, the city and the refugee are touched by the frame more than held by it, labour and the family are absent, and much is named rather than rendered; ten songs in forty-two minutes describe the form.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.8 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.5, then The Sublime at 8.1 and The Made at 8.0. A recording whole after forty-three years, with two songs continuously present since release and a third long the band’s close; an anthemic lift across the first side, from the opener’s drum to the floating height of Drowning Man, and the plain grace of “40”; and a making load-bearing where it matters, in a drum that marches and a bass that insists.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.4: many orders, the state, the bomb, the sacred, the couple, the city and the displaced, joined by one frame, with the couple, the city and the refugee touched by it more than held, and labour and the family absent. Below the rest, The Inevitable at 7.6, where three songs of the second side are permitted rather than compelled and a fourth restates the opener; then The Bottomless Well and The Inner Law at 7.7, a return concentrated in three or four songs and a law strained in sound by two.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.6 against a threshold of 7.5, by a tenth. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.8, The Made at 8.0, The Inner Law at 7.7, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 8.5 meets the bar exactly, but Pressure on Tradition at 7.9, The Unconcealment at 7.8, The Archetypal Deep at 7.8 and The Swerve at 7.8 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.6, against 7.5. The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.4. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.8, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the album as released by Island in February 1983, ten tracks in their original order, five to a side, about forty-two minutes, produced by Steve Lillywhite and recorded at Windmill Lane Studios, Dublin, in 1982; judged from knowledge of the recording, its lyrics and its reception. No recording or lyric sheet was in hand, and the running time is approximate. Songs are cited by title, and no lyric is quoted beyond a fragment of four words or fewer; “40” sets words from Psalm 40. Facts that could not be verified, among them the exact date of release, the track lengths, the guest players and singers, the producer of each track, the occasion of New Year’s Day, the sleeve photograph and the chart positions, are not given.