U2 - The Joshua Tree

The Joshua Tree is the fifth studio album by Irish rock band U2, originally released in March 1987 via Island Records.

Using the textured sonics of The Unforgettable Fire as a basis, U2 expanded those innovations by scaling back the songs to a personal setting and adding a grittier attack for The Joshua Tree. It's a move that returns them to the sweeping, anthemic rock of War, but if War was an exploding political bomb, The Joshua Tree is a journey through its aftermath, trying to find sense and hope in the desperation.

That means that even the anthems - the epic opener "Where The Streets Have No Name", the yearning "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" - have seeds of doubt within their soaring choruses, and those fears take root throughout the album, whether it's in the mournful sliding acoustic guitars of "Running To Stand Still", the surging "One Tree Hill", or the hypnotic elegy "Mothers Of The Disappeared".

U2 have also tempered their textural post-punk with American influences. Not only are Bono's lyrics obsessed with America, but country and blues influences are heard throughout the record, and instead of using these as roots, they're used as ways to add texture to the music.

With the uniformly excellent songs, the result is a powerful, uncompromising record that became a hit due to its vision and its melody. Never before have U2's big messages sounded so direct and personal.

Voted number 26 in Rolling Stone's top 500 albums of all time, The Joshua Tree remains their finest moment.

Five singles were released from the album: “With Or Without You”; “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”; “Where The Streets Have No Name”; “In God’s Country” and “One Tree Hill”.

This double album 2LP record set is a 30^th Anniversary edition on 180 gram black vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve with a printed booklet, pressed in Germany via Island Records.