Lured by the single “Mysterious Ways,” I bought this album when I was 12 years old. It scared me (a Catholic school kid in rural Iowa). The distorted vocals, the psychedelic guitars, the unmistakable European-ness made my spine tingle. This was the U2 I started with, which some might consider mid-period, or an aberration from their truer, more earnest selves. But this is my favorite version of the band: Funny, sly, sometimes angry and world-weary, but raging against a wounded heart with booze and smokes and roaring laughter with great friends. The album’s named after a line from Mel Brooks’ Nazi-clowning comedy The Producers, for godsakes. Achtung received plenty of praise back in the day, but as it pushes 30 (yikes), the stories surrounding its recording are turning it into an untouchable Exile On Main Street-style legend: Sessions with Eno and Lanois in Berlin as the Wall crumbled. The magic moment when “One” cohered in the studio. Watching Europe change, and The Edge’s marriage dissolve, right before the band’s eyes. It’s all big stuff, but it shouldn’t obscure the fact that Achtung still contains everything fans love about U2. The dizzy “Even Better Than The Real Thing” and snarling “Until The End of the World” lay the groundwork for an old-school-U2 catharsis on “Ultraviolet.” “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” is your romantic radio hit. It’s still guitar, bass, drums, Bono. They just took a buzzsaw to the old machine and rebuilt it from the ground up, smashing the shards back together with abandon. And then added some shitty tinsel just for laughs.

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