How the Tree has grown

CD Choice:Rock

U2
The Joshua Tree (Remastered/ Expanded) Island *****

There was a heated debate about The Joshua Tree. Bono wanted U2's fifth studio work to be a double album; The Edge didn't. There were also band disagreements about the track-ordering, so much so that Kirsty McColl was asked to make the final decision on what songs went where.

Bono felt that the album that went out was "incomplete" in that two tracks that were dropped (Walk to the Water and The Sweetest Thing) were needed to elucidate With or Without You and Trip Through Your Wires. He was right - Water and Sweetest Thing do work as prequels/sequels. But, back in 1987, Edge won the battle.

Bono has won the war, though, at least on this expanded anniversary three-disc edition.

All of the songs recorded for The Joshua Tree sessions are present and correct here, with what have become known as "The Missing Tracks" collected on their own bonus disc (the third disc here is a live DVD). These songs were made available at the time as B-sides to the album's first three singles, but here, back where they belong, they succeed in putting more shape on an already finely sculpted album.

The Joshua Tree transformed U2 from "the biggest underground band in the world" to, as Time magazine put it, "Rock's hottest ticket". Producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois may have worked sonic wonders on the sound, but when a band can't find room for a song such as The Sweetest Thing (later to be one of their biggest chart hits), you get a sense of the strength of the material they had available. Lyrically and musically, the focus button was set to "sharp".

The album, still U2's best- selling and best known (even if many argue that Achtung Baby was a more significant creative work), sees the band divesting themselves of their new-wave vestiges and running into the arms of new- world gospel, folk and blues. Although it's long been viewed as their love/hate letter to America, there are songs here about the fall-out from the 1984 UK miner's strike (Red Hill Mining Town), heroin addiction in inner city Dublin (Running to Stand Still) and one based on Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song (Exit).

Ultimately, this expanded edition demonstrates that The Joshua Tree, and not Rattle and Hum, should have been U2's double album. www.U2.com

Download tracks: Running to Stand Still, Walk to the Water