U2’s Country Mile and Picture of You (X + W): Two fantastic songs – but it’s hard not to be haunted by what they represent

With hindsight, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, the album that U2 released in November 2004, marked the band’s final period of true artistic relevancy. It gave them their last big mainstream hit in the single Vertigo – the chorus of which no doubt has just popped into your head – while the vast cascading riff on City of Blinding Lights stands as one of the Edge’s great moments.
Thereafter, the speed of their decline was bracing. They morphed from a band with something to say into a lucrative touring machine whose occasional studio output served only to remind fans of the Dubliners’ declining creative powers.
Love them or hate them – there were plenty in each camp – but from the late 1970s until 2004 each U2 release felt as if it mattered. After How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, that was no longer the case. No Line on the Horizon, their 2009 LP, was a listless mirage, while Songs of Innocence, from 2014, and Songs of Surrender, from 2017, struggled to pair Bono’s heartfelt reflections on growing up in Dublin and then making his way into the world with memorable tunes.
That point is reinforced by two new singles from a forthcoming “shadow album” consisting of unreleased material from the Atomic Bomb sessions, How to Re-Assemble an Atomic Bomb, which will be released on November 22nd. Capturing four musicians firing on all creative pistons, Country Mile and Picture of You (X + W) are blisteringly moreish and showcase all that is – or was – great about U2. It’s good to have that version of the band back, if only on a whistle-stop visit from the archives.
At their best, U2 were songwriting sponges who soaked up what was going on in alternative rock and applied their own supersized twist. In the late 1970s they took Joy Division-style postpunk and gave it a stadium-rock shimmer. One of their finest albums, Achtung Baby, from 1991, was influenced by shoegaze and by groups such as The Stone Roses. (See the Edge’s shimmering riff at the start of Mysterious Ways.)
How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb chronicled a transition period in their lives. Bono’s father had died several years previously, and the band were heading towards their mid-40s – not ancient, by any means, but at a point where there was surely a temptation to take success for granted. They were wealthy men in early middle age, with families, private yachts and houses across the world – a kiss of death to many musicians but something that U2 were able to (briefly) overcome on the album.
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With Country Mile it’s also clear that early-2000s U2 were paying attention to the emergence of a new generation of anthemic bands, such as Coldplay and Travis. This isn’t Bono doing Chris Martin, but the song is nonetheless driven by chiming guitars while the chorus of “I, oh, I believe you…” has the same indie-singer-expresses-his-deepest-feelings quality that fuelled Coldplay’s Yellow.
Picture of You (X + W), the second teaser for How to Re-Assemble an Atomic Bomb, is more back-to-basics, a grungy number featuring agreeably chugging guitar by the Edge and a lovely soaring chorus by Bono (“all I want is a picture of you … a picture in a locket”).
What a shame U2 would never again soar to these heights. These two songs are fantastic – but it’s also hard not to be haunted by what they represent. They are one final moment of Technicolor glory before a long fade to beige.