Graphics turned “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)” into a celebration of present and historical - make that herstorical - female achievers. Songs from U2’s post-1980s catalog were linked to causes. For “Mothers of the Disappeared,” an elegy for political prisoners, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam sang a verse, and U2 was also joined by Ben Harper and the concert’s openers, Mumford & Sons. “Running to Stand Still” is a portrait of an addict, while “Red Hill Mining Town” contemplates vanishing mining jobs. Some of its songs hold eerie resonances with present American problems. One reason to revive “The Joshua Tree” is that its concerns - personal, societal, mystical - haven’t disappeared. It doesn’t write scolding protests it strives for empathy, hope and, ultimately, exaltation. A backlash would dismiss similar efforts as naïve or pretentious, but U2 has persisted. “The Joshua Tree” was a high-water mark of an era when leading rockers were eager to be role models and do-gooders, giving benefit concerts like Live Aid and Amnesty International’s Conspiracy of Hope tour, which both included U2.
on drums, Adam Clayton on bass and the Edge on guitar tore into the urgent rhythmic flux of “Where the Streets Have No Name.” Against the craggy postpunk groove of “Bullet the Blue Sky,” both Bono’s falsetto and the Edge’s guitar leads were keening sirens. The band was dwarfed, but the music wasn’t. “The Joshua Tree” was performed against that video backdrop, often with starkly beautiful desert scenes by Anton Corbijn, the photographer for the “Joshua Tree” album cover and many other U2 graphics.