U2: The Best of 1990-2000

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * * * )

An easy way to compare U2's first decade to its second is a little game of remember-the-chorus. It's a rare song from The Best of 1980-1990 (released three years ago) that can't bring on an instant karaoke moment, even if you don't own the original albums or haven't played them in years.

However, the second 10 years of U2 can leave you frequently stumped.

Er, something, something Discotheque! Or, um, dum dum dum ... I fee-eel numb. And ooh ooh here she comes ... uh-oh, it's the Pavarotti bit, best give up. Yes, it does have the easy-to-bellow-along-to Even Better Than The Real Thing, Mysterious Ways, and One - their greatest ballad, surely, as was further confirmed by Johnny Cash's subsequent cover - all from the U2-go-nuts-in-Berlin album Achtung Baby.

That LP announced, with its cracking lead single The Fly, curiously not included here, the beginning of the identity crisis years.

As well, the stirring two tracks - Beautiful Day and Stuck in a Moment That You Can't Get Out Of - from their stick-to-their-knitting last studio album All That You Can't Leave Behind also up the ante of hearty anthems, helping make this a collection that feels slightly revisionist, especially care of the new rockier mixes of Discotheque and Gone.

There are hints of the technicolour/mirrorball/Mephisto/Zoo Tv/ soundtracks-for-imaginary-movies period of much of the middle of the 90s and albums such as the patchy and mildly intriguing Zooropa and Pop and the unwieldy side-project Passengers Original Soundtracks 1.

They all allowed them to embrace the art-school influence of longtime producer Brian Eno. Featuring a rare lead vocal - well, a mumble really - by guitarist The Edge, Numb could have been a song off one of Eno's 70s solo albums.

So too could have much of the Passengers side project, here solely represented by the aforementioned mini rock-opera Miss Sarajevo.

There are two new tracks. Electrical Storm is slow, rollicking, heroic and forgettable enough to have got the job of making TVNZ's America's Cup promos sound important.

Then there's The Hands that Built America - the theme from Martin Scorsese's forthcoming period epic Gangs of New York. The song warns: this will be a very long movie. For all of its efforts to evoke ye olde worlde, it sounds more like an ode to the modern city with Bono's awkwardly literal lyrics about "canyons of glass and steel" and references to the NY skyline. Not one to keep many in their seats when the end credits roll.

As for the balance of the 16 tracks, this feels not so much like a best-of the band's second decade but a peace offering to the fans who got frightened off during it.

Until, that is, All That You Can't Leave Behind, which said that going back to sounding like banner-waving U2 again was the best way to age gracefully.

U2's second decade was riskier and less repetitive than their first and there were several more costume changes. That makes it a hard period to satisfyingly sum up on a single album. Way too hard, apparently.

Label: Island