The Joshua Tree [Remaster] (CD - 1987)

Additional personnel includes: Daniel Lanois (guitar, keyboards, tambourine, background vocals); Brian Eno (keyboards, programming, background vocals).

Recorded at Windmill Lane Studios, Dublin, Ireland.

THE JOSHUA TREE won the 1987 Grammy award for album of the year.

U2: Bono (vocals, harmonica); The Edge (guitar, keyboards, background vocals); Adam Clayton (bass); Larry Mullen Jr. (drums).

Additional personnel includes: Daniel Lanois (guitar, keyboards, tambourine, background vocals); Brian Eno (keyboards, programming, background vocals).

Engineers include: Flood.

Recorded at Windmill Lane Studios, Dublin, Ireland.

Personnel: Bono (vocals); The Edge (guitar); Adam Clayton (bass instrument); Larry Mullen, Jr. (drums).

Few bands are as ready for superstardom as U2 circa 1986. After chart successes with WAR and THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE and a high profile appearance at Live Aid, the Irish quartet holed up at a Dublin studio with engineers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, and crafted the definitive sound of late '80s mainstream rock. Deftly marrying WAR's edgy bombast, THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE's impressionism, Eno's ambient flourishes, and the band's newfound interest in American roots music, THE JOSHUA TREE is U2's crowning moment, a perfect nexus of the band's expansive muse and the popular zeitgeist. It consistently ranks in the higher reaches of critics' lists of the greatest albums of all time.

Thanks to both Eno's georgeous production and a stellar set of songs, the album has aged stunningly. The first three tracks--the rousing "Where the Streets Have No Name," the gospel-inflected "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," and the tortured, echo-drenched ballad "With or Without You"--have all become FM standards, but cuts such as "Red Hill Mining Town," "Running to Stand Still," and "In God's Country," with grittier Americana influences, resonate just as emphatically. The rhythm section's propulsive minimalism (Larry Mullen, Jr. and Adam Clayton) provides the perfect bedrock for the Edge's veritable clinic on guitar effects and economy. Like the best U2, however, the album belongs to Bono, whose soulful voice hitches an epic passion to lyrics both deeply personal and overtly political. minimize