U2 still plays like a band with something to prove

‘America is not a country,” opined Bono at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night, throwing in his usual two (or maybe it’s closer to 10) cents about the land that made U2 stars. “It’s an idea, still being shaped, it’s still being born, and I want to be part of that idea.”

The same could easily be said of his band. Thirty-five years on from its debut album “Boy,” U2 has veteran status and yet, it’s still not fully formed. Sometimes, the growing pains are obvious. Last year, the band created a backlash by opting to foist its middling 13th album “Songs of Innocence” onto anyone with an iTunes account, a move that even Bono himself admitted was, in hindsight, something close to “megalomania.”

But during the first of eight nights at the Garden (running until the end of July), the quartet managed to not only push themselves into new realms as performers, but also to raise the bar for arena concerts in general.

The centerpiece of the current “Innocence and Experience” tour is a giant suspended screen and walkway, running through the middle of the venue (with stages at each end). For the first half of the set, it was used to project memories and images of the life that Bono, guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr all lived as boys in 1970s Dublin.

During “Cedarwood Road” – an ode to the street on which Bono grew up on – the singer strolled the walkway, as a recreation of his neighborhood was simulated around him. It was almost like watching a kind of animated, interactive Google Street View set to music. During a mournful “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” victims of sectarian violence in Ireland were also woven into the recreations. It was a powerful, immersive look back at U2’s past that, on a technical level at least, could signpost the future for live music as a spectacle.

Such incredible visual stimulation made it easy to miss, but U2 are also playing like a band with something to prove. The stilted production of “Songs of Innocence” was blown apart by the band’s aggression, particularly on “Raised by Wolves” which roared out of the speakers with an aptly feral feel. While the U2 haters snickered obnoxiously at the news that Bono can no longer play the guitar following last year’s biking accident in Central Park, the front man is getting the last (and loudest) word by singing songs like “With or Without You” and “Pride (In the Name of Love)” with more precision than ever.

The decades old rush to declare the band irrelevant is still premature. There’s no Irish goodbye in sight for U2; they’re still shaping themselves and their ideas, and anyone with an interest in rock should want to be a part of them.