Song choices, taging and video components see U2's eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE tour garnering rave reviews in the United States.

Good times are in store for U2 fans as they’re back on the road with their new eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE tour that will see them play all over America till the beginning of July.  The band unveiled their show last Wednesday in Tulsa, and the reviews were glowing.

Those looking for a night of greatest hits, though, won’t find a whole bunch of what they’re looking for in the new tour.  Earlier this year U2 released their Songs of Experience CD, and that’s what they’re promoting…some deep tracks and a few of the oldies mixed in as well.

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Rolling Stone praised the tour as “conclusive proof that they've decided to take a very different path, one that is much more difficult to maneuver but is a hell of a lot more interesting and far less predictable. The best example of that is a list of the songs they did not play at the show, which includes "New Year's Day," "Bad," "Mysterious Ways," "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," "Bullet the Blue Sky," "With or Without You" and, astoundingly, "Where the Streets Have No Name" or anything else from The Joshua Tree.”

The staging and video components of the tour are said to be a triumph, unsurprisingly – U2 always raises the tech bar with every new tour. Tickets remain for a few of the concerts, including those in the New York area at the end of June.

The Edge, meanwhile, had a pretty reasoned take on Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s Irish invite for President Trump, which he extended during his St. Patrick’s visit to the White House.

Edge spoke with Barry Egan of the Sunday Independent on the eve of the Tulsa show and had this to say about the Trump-Varadkar meeting:  “There is a basic level of politeness you have to follow. So, it transcends in some ways the partisan issues. Our take on the president is pretty well known. It doesn't necessarily reflect our attitude to the more conservative people of the United States. A lot of them, I have a lot of time for and I could see eye to eye with them on a lot of things. It is not about that.

“Bono has famously worked successfully with a lot of Republican politicians, so it is not really a case of us against them. I think he (Leo) is doing the right thing as he sees it. You can't really argue with that."

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