The Prodigal Journey of U2

A wonderful meditation on U2's career (and HTDAAB reflection piece) through the metaphor of the wandering pilgrim, something first tried 10 years back by Bill Flanagan in U2 at the End of the World and now updated at The Phantom Tolbooth. For my money, the article is at its best when tracing the pilgrim's journey over U2's various albums, but does a bit too much shoehorning of HTDAAB songs into its metaphor (even needing to ignore some of U2's public comments about their own lyric references along the way). Quite a marvelous point though about the importance of the "choosing love over romance" theme.
Ending of the article: [U2's] '20s were thoughtful, spiritual, and fiery, the 30s were celebratory, artistic, and sensual. Now, the '40s are shaping up to be about the things that really matter. That's where the album's title comes in: it's about cracking the code to decipher the things in life that are really tricky. U2 has approached them first with innocence, and then with denial, now they are really getting somewhere.