For the 20th anniversary of U2’s award-winning How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, the band (or record company, probably) put out an expected 20th anniversary remastered edition, not that it needed remastering to still sound good. But in looking at the vaults, U2 discovered 10 unreleased, finished songs that didn’t make the original album, and opted to release these as a standalone album and as part of the 20th anniversary reissue. To my knowledge, the standalone album is only available at Record Store Day, but you can also find it as part of the reissue on Spotify.

This is as close as we’ve gotten to new music from U2 since 2017’s lackluster Songs Of Experience, and it’s already miles better than the dreadful re-recording project Songs Of Surrender from 2023. Longtime fans of the band know that there are some great B-sides through the band’s history that outstrip songs from their actual albums: “Salome,” “Spanish Eyes,” “Ground Beneath Her Feet,” “Sweetest Thing,” “Lady With The Spinning Head,” “Big Girls Are Best,” “Summer Rain” and so forth. This carries on that grand tradition.

Those familiar with “Fast Cars,” the bonus track from the original album that didn’t appear on the disc, will have a sense of what to expect. Re-Assemble collects the more interesting detours and sounds that U2 was exploring during the recording session, and—much like Oasis’ The Masterplan—what ended up left off the album was more interesting that what ended up on it. How To Dismantle is a conservative and solid album that falls off hard at the end; replacing the dullest tracks with the best of this “shadow album” would have resulted in a very different, much more interesting listen.

It’s not that U2 got boring around this time; it’s that they consciously decided to shelve the more interesting parts of their songwriting in favor of commercially-friendly, midtempo pieces (and one rock song per album) that would sell well and not result in critical and commercial failures like 1997’s endlessly interesting Pop. So what you heard on Dismantle was a band trying to sound like U2 and keep the throne of World’s Biggest Band.

What you hear on Re-Assemble is the real U2, and it’s far more interesting. The loose rocker “Picture Of You (X+W)” is an excellent opener, while “Evidence Of Life” takes the old-school U2 sound but updates it to a modern rock aesthetic (at the time; think The Killers) with Bono on keyboards and some great Edge falsetto backing vocals. The six-minute-long “Luckiest Man In The World” (originally called “Mercy”) was slotted as the original album closer but bumped for its length; it would have been better than “Original Of The Species,” that’s for sure.

The most interesting track is “Treason,” which fuses elements of hip hop with the sound of Pop, harkening back to a session between Bono and Dr. Dre (the latter isn’t on this track, but the session inspired it; Bono raps around the three-minute mark over top of an overdriven Edge guitar. “I Don’t Wanna See You Smile” was released with the iPod as “Smile” back in 2004, so fans who forgot about that will be glad to have it back.

They aren’t all winners. “Happiness” is a lesser imitation of Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out,” but shows the band at least trying to stay current, while “Country Mile” is yet another soaring midtempo piece intended for arenas but without a memorable hook. There’s also a brief instrumental called “Theme From ‘The Batman’” that Edge wrote for a cartoon soundtrack that’s quite good, and then the album closes with “All Because Of You 2,” an alternate take on the original. This version pushes Larry Mullen Jr.’s drums to the forefront and turns the piece into a fiercer rocker, with more vocal and instrumental fire than the album version.

Like any b-sides or oddities collection, this isn’t perfect, but it has several standout moments that dispel the myth of U2’s slide into self-parody in the early 2000s. One can understand the decision to leave Dismantle as it was, but more of these tracks and less of “Miracle Drug” or “One Step Closer” would have made a far more interesting album. Regardless, it’s good to have these songs see the light of day, and they help paint a more complete picture of a band that remained interesting in its middle age, even if they chose to hide that from the world.

Rating: B

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