From the start, it was clear that U2 could create impressive music. The jagged guitar riff and thundering drone that launched "I Will Follow" and the rest of their 1981 debut album...Boy...was eloquent and visceral. It was also musically uncomplicated...these four young Dubliners had an instinctive sense for making the most out of simple shifts in dynamics and elementary voicings, and gave their sound a rough, exhilarating grandiloquence. The only problem was that once U2 caught a listener's attention, they had little to say. Boy waxed poetic on the mysteries of childhood without really illuminating any of them; October, its successor, wrapped itself...
Read the entire album review in Rolling Stone circa 1983: http://rol.st/1BUB2UE
Watch U2 perform Sunday Bloody Sunday Live From Slane Castle via YouTube: