page_title: Experience + Innocence Tour
section_title: Critical response
hierarchical_section_title: Experience + Innocence Tour / Reception / Critical response
caption_attribution_description: English: Irish rock band U2 performing at The O2 in London, England on October 24, 2018 on their Experience + Innocence Tour
context_page_description: The Experience + Innocence Tour was a worldwide concert tour by rock band U2. Staged in support of the band's 2017 album, Songs of Experience, the tour visited arenas throughout 2018. Comprising two legs and 60 concerts, the Experience + Innocence Tour visited North America from May through July, and Europe from August through November. It began on 2 May 2018 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and ended on 13 November 2018 in Berlin, Germany. The tour followed U2's 2015 Innocence + Experience Tour as the second in a pair of tours in support of the group's companion albums, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.
  The 2018 tour reprised the loose autobiographical narrative from the 2015 tour, along with the original's multifaceted stage comprising a rectangular main stage, circular B-stage, connecting walkway, and doubled-sided LED video screen with an interior walkway. Several enhancements were made to the set, such as a higher resolution and more transparent video screen and the addition of LED panels to the B-stage floor.
context_section_description: The tour received generally positive reviews, with critics praising both the staging and content of the tour. Jennifer O'Brien of The Times praised the group for delivering a message that espoused tolerance and denounced the political climate, and she thought the reliance on new material and absence of The Joshua Tree songs did not hurt the setlist. O'Brien said the group were "still at the top of their game, embracing state-of-the-art technologies and moving forward, a direction they clearly hope the US can go". Dave Egan in the Irish Independent called the opening night "One of the bravest, most powerful and even angriest performances U2 have ever done" and praised the reintroduction of MacPhisto after an absence of 25 years since Zoo TV. Reviewing the first show at the Forum, Roy Trakin in Variety said that "when it comes to performing live, the band remains the gold (and platinum) standard" and noted that U2 refused to rely on nostalgia, with almost half the set being taken from the last two albums. His review also said that the band were performing as a well-oiled machine despite being on the road for only two weeks at that point.
  Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune called one of their Chicago concerts "sometimes stupefying, sometimes riveting, and brimmed with ideas, if not always the most proficient means of realizing them", while singling out the quietest moments as the most resonant. Kot lauded the Innocence suite in the act's first half, as well as the "series of songs that savaged the reawakening of the white-supremacist movement in America", but said the latter was undercut by the performance of "American Soul", which he called U2's "clumsiest and least persuasive" political song. Nashville Scene said, "When it comes to matching musical themes with jaw-dropping visuals, U2 concerts are the Steven Spielberg films, the James Cameron epics, the Star Wars-sized events of rock." The publication praised the group for being "determined not to rest on its laurels", but judged that their emphasis on newer material towards the end of the show at the expense of well-known hits was the one flaw of the concert. Dan DeLuca of The Philadelphia Inquirer found the segment of the show that addressed the rise of white nationalism the most moving, believing it showed the U2 songs most relevant in 2018 were their older ones. He thought the use of their newer tracks to tell a coherent narrative worked "well enough" and closed by saying "U2 still delivers the goods and can be truly thrilling at times". Dave Simpson of The Guardian said, "It is also the most visually spectacular outing yet for a band who have previously toured with a mirrorball lemon and a giant claw". He judged that their social campaigning was more effective during this tour than in the past due to its relative subtlety. Simpson wrote, "It is not necessarily their best show... but it is certainly their most human."
caption: U2 performing in London on 24 October 2018
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