U2: ‘Claw’ing its way right back to the top

The Claw, the Crab, the Spaceship — whatever you call U2’s latest stadium-shrinking contraption, it’s undeniably impressive. The previews and reviews of the group’s 360 Tour, which lands at FedEx Field on Tuesday, dutifully tick off the custom stage’s dimensions: At 164 feet tall, its frame towers above the stadium surrounding it, holding aloft a bleeding-edge 360-degree video screen, with a $40 million price tag.

 To quote one of the other few remaining stadium acts, this could be the last time. Performers like Bruce Springsteen and the Dave Matthews Band still pack stadiums in some markets, but megastars of more recent vintage like Beyonce or Green Day stick to 20,000-ish-capacity arenas these days, as U2 did on its prior two United States outings.

Not since 1997’s ill-attended, misunderstood PopMart Tour has the Irish supergroup dared book only the biggest rooms in this country. (Though tickets remain available for the show at FedEx Field, Rob Muller of tour promoter Live Nation says organizers expect “a full house.”) Now as then, U2 is using its massive roadshow to promote an album that America hasn’t exactly embraced. Twelve years ago, it was the electronica-influenced “POP.” Now it’s “No Line on the Horizon,” an honorable effort that finds the band back out on a creative limb after two satisfying, but comparatively staid, records this decade.

U2 is performing seven of the new songs most nights, and other 21st-century hits like “Beautiful Day” and “Vertigo,” too. Though it offers more recent material than any other stadium-level band, U2 knows it’s primarily the classics putting butts in the seats (or feet on the field). The set varies somewhat, but you can count on hearing at least nine or 10 tunes from 1991’s “Achtung Baby” and earlier.

Two of U2’s four members were still in their teens when the band began touring the United States in the early 1980s. From the start, its shows were hailed as ecstatic, communal experiences. But it wasn’t until the 1992-93 ZOO TV Tour — an ironic multimedia spectacle that both satirized the “Big Rock” ritual and elevated it with production values that earlier stadium dinosaurs like Led Zeppelin or The Who hadn’t even dreamed of — that the group, so famed (and mocked) in the ’80s for its earnestness, became associated with spectacle.

The band tried to repeat ZOO TV’s success five years later with PopMart — the one with the 40-foot lemon-shaped mirrorball you might have heard about, the moment when U2’s once-astute satire curdled into camp. It didn’t help that “POP” was a weaker album than “Achtung Baby,” or that U2 began the 1997 tour underrehearsed and needed weeks of shows in front of paying crowds to get back into fighting shape.

Today, accounts of the 360 Tour tell a different story. Since its U.S. leg kicked off with two sold-out shows at Chicago’s Soldier Field two weeks ago, most critics have praised the band as sounding as reliably uplifting as ever.

I’ll be there Tuesday, hoping to witness something extraordinary. I’m just not sure what the show’s about this time. There’s nothing wrong with simply playing two dozen rock songs, some of them among the best of the last three decades.

But U2, for all its sincerity, also surely is the most calculated rock band ever to be inspired into being by The Ramones. We’re used to hearing an aesthetic rationale for its every move — even that stupid lemon. I hope I’ll discover the Claw, or the Crab, or the Spaceship has a purpose beyond just swelling the number of punters who can fit into a football stadium. Temporary transit to another world? We’ll see.