U2 sermonizes and struts with equal fervor
(Correction: Because of a reporting error, the name of U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr. was misspelled in a Living/Arts review on Monday of the band's May 28 concert.)
The rock concert as church service metaphor is overused and rarely apt. How righteous -- as in morally sound, not totally rad -- are most rock stars? But it can't, and shouldn't, be avoided in the case of U2. By the time the Irish rockers deftly, systematically delivered an arena full of worshipers to a state of euphoria for the third time in less than a week, matters that transcend the simple pleasures of chords and choruses had come into play.
That's not to say that there weren't moments, plenty of them, where Bono's tireless humanitarian work and spiritual soul searching were kicked to the curb in the rush of a big, uncomplicated anthem. ''Vertigo," a set highlight that the band reprised at the close of Saturday's show, amounted to nothing more than a sea of pumping fists and beating hearts -- something we can feel, to paraphrase the song lyrics. But where the garden-variety rocker is happy to leave it at that, Bono (like all the great crusaders) expertly wove the visceral and the topical.
The last of the Irish quartet's trio of Boston dates varied only slightly from the previous two. The deep-catalog cuts ''An Cat Dubh" and ''Into the Heart," from U2's 1980 debut, ''Boy," were trotted out during the flashback segment. ''Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" replaced ''With or Without You" as the night's ethereal, soul-searching love song. A blistering ''New Year's Day" fleshed out U2's protopolitical mini-set that included ''Sunday Bloody Sunday" and ''Bullet the Blue Sky." And while, generally speaking, we award big points for spontaneity and veering off script, at this moment in time it's U2's constancy -- the sense of purpose and conscience that once again defines its music -- that matters most.
Just how effortlessly Bono inhabits the roles of preening icon and conscience of a generation is mind-boggling. One minute the Nobel Peace Prize nominee was beseeching President Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair to end poverty as the band launched into the galvanizing sing-along ''One," and the next he was wrapped in a feather boa and wearing a rakishly skewed captain's hat as ''The Fly." Granted, that Zoo TV-era alter ego was an ironic guise, but crawling on the gargantuan circular catwalk while fans frantically snapped cellphone pictures was pure pop-star pose.
Of course, each feeds off of, and deepens, the other. When at the end of the two-hour show Bono offered ''all praises to our Heavenly Father and Larry Mullins," he wasn't kidding. Faith in God and his band -- and the possibility of making the world a better place -- has given Bono his unique credentials, expertly deployed in political arenas and hockey arenas.
Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. 
