FOR many bands, a crowd of 20,000 packing the O2 Arena for them is a sign of big things.
Indeed, when Las Vegas band Imagine Dragons turn up for a two night residency on November 4th and 5th, this will represent a big moment in their career trajectory, much as it has done for many bands to have rocked up at the tent with its inconsistent acoustics.
For the band here before the Vegassians, their first show of their current residency also represents their first visit to this corner of London. But its safe to say U2's career trajectory has taken them to bigger steps than their six night residency here.
The band's last full tour concert in the UK's capital was in August 2009, when they packed a record-breaking crowd into Wembley Stadium to gawp at their stadium-dwarfing 360 Claw. Here, the toys on display when the crowd arrives - no thanks to technical difficulties that meant people were still getting in after the show started - are seen as a two-sided video wall, and a solitary light-bulb.
A dash before 8pm, the show begins when Bono comes out the back of the venue and onto the smaller stage in the middle of the O2, where he applauds the crowd before chanting the opening "wooahoh" that opens The Miracle (of Joey Ramone) to a piano backing.
The rest of the band then pile in, but in truth, the song lacks a certain power as a concert opener. While some could call it fatigue of the band's comically hated Songs of Innocence and its controversial launch, the song doesn't exactly sparkle.
But before fears could be the band has lost their live chops, they then go for it. A rousing rendition of 1980's The Electric Co then gives way to a rousing Vertigo, and then that itself leads straight into the band's rousing early single I Will Follow.
That is certainly much more like it. But the show then takes a curious turn for the autobiographical through the new stuff. It could well be the case that for a band now some 39 years into their career, some would take them as a toilet break, but the tracks introduce an impressive dimension to the gig.
In many respects, the songs soon turn into confessional therapy for the band's frontman. The soaring Iris (Hold Me Close) sees the video wall flicker on with home movies of Bono's long-lost mother, who died when he was 14, while following track Cedarwood Road brings out the show-stopper moment, as Bono climbs inside the video wall and walks down an animated recreation of his home street.
The trend continues, with Song for Someone showing an animation of an 18-year-old Bono trying to write music. But what's more striking is the fact that despite the hit-and-miss nature of the record, the new songs sound very much alive in the gigantic canvas tent - quite an achievement given the nature of the room.
The detour to something of U2's older hits is a stripped down Sunday Bloody Sunday, which sees The Edge's guitar shorn of its usual effects pedals, and Larry Mullen Jr emerge from his kit to tap away on a lap-snare on the runway in the middle of the stadium. But the end is the most striking part, given it ends in '70s radio broadcasts and the almighty sounds of a car exploding.
This cascades into a pulsing Raised by Wolves, which end in cries to bring to justice the perpetrators of the 1974 Dublin bombing. It then heads into a titanic rendition of Until the End of the World, which sees trickery with the screen as Edge stands inside it, before it ends in cartoon waves while pages of books fall from the sky above the moshpit.
Screen trickery continues, as after an intermission video recalling the Zoo TV days synced to a remix of The Fly, the band re-emerge inside Berlin Wall styled-graphics to perform first Invisible and then the first half of Even Better Than The Real Thing.
The second half of the funked-up monster sees the band move to the smaller stage en masse, where they continue through a punchy one-two of Mysterious Ways and Elevation. The latter two see an audience member bought on stage, first to dance, and then to hold a phone to live stream the second song on Meerkat.
But much more stripped away to good affect is a very nice rendition of Every Breaking Wave, with just piano and vocals. This cascades into a section on the current crises on Europe's borders, which takes in sombre drone footage of deserted and destroyed Syrian cities during October, footage of refugees, extremists, and protests in a powerful Bullet the Blue Sky, and a sombre stripped-down Zooropa, which gives poignant synth backing to the song's lyrics of uncertainty.
While Bullet... is mainly dominated by the song's still relevant anti-war rant being replaced by an argument between 19-year-old Bono and the millionaire he grew into, the section does make some form of narrative sense. It particularly rings true when the sombre synths and cries of "what do you want?" segue into the classic Where the Streets Have No Name, and a still-enormous Pride (in the Name of Love).
In many respects, despite an initial misstep, the band's performance demonstrated that nearly some four decades on from when they first started playing music, the band's style still works. Mullen's drum work retains its tribal power, while Adam Clayton - very much U2's under-the-radar man - provides a titanic wall of bass that sweeps all before it, and the Edge's continuous attention to detail sees him ring out guitar lines with a simple but well-harnessed power.
Sure, the show ends a little anti-climactically in the form of a rendition of One used more as audience karaoke than traditional show-stopper. And there's a long long list of omissions that would've made the show better, although such is the catalogue they amassed that U2 can omit Bad, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, Running to Stand Still, Desire, Out of Control, Love is Blindness, and pretty much everything between 1991 and 2000.
But at the heart of it, U2 remain an excellent proposition live, and one that can even make a space like the O2 feel for 2 and a quarter hours like the venue its proprietors think it is. Indeed, with six nights here as part of their UK tour, the band is certainly doing well at reminding people of its powers, albeit this time with their permission.
4/5
