Originally posted by trainmaniac:After my tour debut I have a very optimistic opinion regarding the band's decisions when it comes to the setlist and the show as a whole.
It's obviously similar to the IE tour but it's dramatically better mainly because SOE's songs are far superior to SOI's (at least, those that were played on a regular basis). At a point where it's easy to forget that they haven't played any song from the Joshua Tree.
The only lows of the shows were Sunday Bloody Sunday (yeah, underwhelming version once again) and City of Blinding Lights.
The rest of the show is so, so, so strong. From all the tours I've seen (since 2005 only) it's certainly the one I enjoyed the most to date because everything matches so well. Don't get me wrong, if I were to define the setlist I would change it a lot (to throw the whole Pop album in there, mainly), but I think the band totally nailed what they were hoping to do: to showcase a well defined narrative and highlight their newest songs. They were not sucessful promoting the new songs on a live setting since the Vertigo tour so this fact alone is quite impressive for 58 years old guys with a huge hits catalog behind them. You may not like the static setlist or their options (I would obviously play Little Things and Landlady / Showman) but you can't argue the success they're having with the new songs. The slots they choose for them are very wise decisions.
The first half is not the strongest part of the show (partially because that's what we have already seen in 2015) but from the intermission 'til the end is just awesome. The intermission itself is brilliant and is really helping to build the narrative of the impressive segment from Elevation until Acrobat - they've done great things in the past but rarely have they nailed so well to mix songs with a story. The whole E-stage performance is brilliant and I was very impressed by the unplugged version of Best Thing and Summer of Love is just gorgeous.
Pride - Get Out - New Year's Day could be a classic segment from U2 shows, especially with the new arrangements they came with for Pride and NYD.
The encore is what makes the difference to me, and that why I say this european leg is probably one of their finest hours: they've crafted a perfect encore, with the right dosage of anticipation, of hope, of despair, of activism ... and symbology. One and Love is Bigger are both huge moments where they easily have the crowd singing along so loud that you can't ignore their power. And 13 is a perfect ending for this 4 years of intense work from the band, leaving the stage with the light bulb on, again. I've never imagined that a 3-songs encore, featuring 2 new ones, could produce such an artistic ending for a rock show. That's my favorite part of the show.
Really looking forward to see 2 more shows in this tour. They took great risks on the creativity side and they totally won the bet, against the odds.
