Changing personnel from Go to Torn
Go opens Carnaval de Luz; Torn closes it. Reading U2’s album, scheduled for November 13, from those two ends makes its choices of musical personnel concrete. In Dave Simpson’s account, Go places electronically treated guitars and Brian Eno’s synthesizers inside a line-up with Larry Mullen Jr back on drums. Torn pairs Bono with Dolly Parton and adds Daniel Lanois on pedal steel. My reading of these details centres on placement: the opening and closing songs give guest musicians different positions within the album. The choice of who plays matters alongside the choice of where their contribution enters the sequence.[1]
Simpson describes La Reina moving from a rock opening into a hymn-like repeated passage. He also identifies Eno’s contribution to The Greatest Show on Earth and a harder drive in Silencio. A useful comparison reaches beyond sorting songs into energetic and quiet categories. Changing the accompaniment within one song and sequencing different kinds of accompaniment across an album are distinct arranging decisions. La Reina gives a concrete starting point for the first; the personnel at the opening and closing give one for the second. That is where I place the question raised by the return to guitars: how the arrangement positions its changes.[1]
An extra song changes the whole
The album’s boundary then becomes a second musical choice. Simpson regrets leaving American Obituary, The Tears of Things and In a Life outside the main record; material from the year’s two EPs appears only on the deluxe edition. His admiration for those songs explains his wish to include them. I see a competing choice in the boundary around the work. More songs give the listener a larger repertoire. A narrower sequence preserves an encounter with a particular beginning and ending. Assessing the editions therefore involves the shape into which additional songs enter, alongside the quality the critic attributes to them.[1]
I would keep that reading conditional rather than assign the band a settled motive. Simpson himself leaves open whether the extra material fitted the flow; separating editions may also be a release choice for different listening habits. Even so, the reported placements make the repertoire question concrete: the sequence beginning with Go and ending with Torn, or a larger collection including the EP songs? What interests me is the comparison that choice invites. Guests’ instrumental roles, a change of form within a song and the boundary around an edition provide musical terms for discussing the album alongside the story of a band reconvening.[1]