The Best Of 1990-2000

11/06/2002 4:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Ken Micallef

U2 has had a very good year. Make that a very good two years and counting. Destined for dismissal after the pretentious pomp of Pop and Zooropa, U2 returned victorious with the thoughtful All You Can't Leave Behind. For some six months, the album worked as both hit making vehicle and NYC comforter, with soulful pop songs seemingly written for heart-wrenched New Yorkers everywhere.

The Best Of 1990-2000 features hits and misses from the aforementioned albums along with B-sides, remixes and two new songs, but why anyone would purchase this for CD 1 alone is incomprehensible. Who after all, doesn't already own (or heard enough of) "One," "Beautiful Day," "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me," or "Mysterious Ways"? But if you are a collector, CD 2 is the motherlode of U2 esoterica. Like "Wild Honey," new song "Electrical Storm" is a fluffy white cloud groover. Bookended by a raucous and woozy "Happiness Is A Warm Gun," it's followed by the house-gospel remixed "Even Better Than The Real Thing," a big-beat-bombed "Mysterious Ways," and a quirky, electro-infused "If God Will Send His Angels." Along with "Electrical Storm" (which comes in original and remixed flavors), Best Of... includes Gangs Of New York theme song, "The Hands That Built America," extending U2's "we love America" campaign.

Like a cross between Ennio Morricone and the U2 of Boy, the song is atmospheric and plaintive, with gauzy electronica production floating above an ethereal groove. It's not a great song as songs go, and Bono sounds like he is working solo from U2. Emulating Pavarotti as much as Bowie in a moment of rapturous, rock star indulgence, Bono's performance is a throwback to an era when the rock icon was both God and gladfly. A soundtrack song that will only last as long as the film, it's not a good reason to buy The Best Of, but a commercial offering among an album of oddities.