I would, however, like to make "Waves" at least available to everyone who, like me, can't go jumping up and grab the JT re-release right away.

Waves of Sorrow (Birdland)

I'm afraid I'm a little let down by the vocal - Bono darling you need to stop doing recordings when you've been up all night. Also STOP FREAKING SMOKING FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND MUSICALLY DECENT!!!!!! gah. *giggles* Still lovely, though, and musically creates a really strong mood. I've listened five or six times in the past hour. There is one snippet of pure beauty toward the end, where even in that video clip he stopped singing along and just listened and let the purity of emotion wash over him.
...for as strange as it feels to hear present-B singing a track in the middle of all the JT-B, I think he might have been right. While his voice had more raw power to it then, it has so many more subtleties to it now, which I think suits this song better. Like he couldn't have sung "Miss Sarajevo" in 1982, y'know?

As for the other songs, anyone who wants let me know - I just downloaded the ones I didn't have, I figure that'll give me a constant reminder to buy the whole album.

"Desert of Our Love" is adorable, there's a fantastic drum-groove, really it's almost a Caribbean vibe to the thing, and Bono just wanders off singing random things and it's darling. (It's also reminding me, again, how close JT and AB are - particularly in the wandering vocals, it reminds me of the Achtung Baby session bootlegs.) Also he shouts random directions to people which always makes me smile.

"Rise Up".. uh, I think is the result of B listening to too much Elvis and Johnny Cash, hee. It sounds a little like "Here Comes Sunset/Chances Away", and has some of the.. oh I don't even know what to call it! the scrabbly little jangly sort of guitar in the "Streets" chorus. You know what I mean. I will say, the outtakes sound even more American-influenced than the album does (uh, with the exception of "Trip"). Really, it's such an odd album, U2 going country, and all the more amazing realizing what they added to make all these influences their own.

"Drunk Chicken/America" is a monotone rant, like the one in "Bullet" only longer. There's an incredibly funky groove going on in the background, VERY Achtung. B drops an F-bomb. Very Fly. Very.. I suppose there's some literary term for this but I couldn't tell you what it is. B also sounds horribly American, like he must have worked hard on this accent, in places it doesn't even sound like him, I keep doing double-takes. The more words I pick out of this thing the more I see ZooTV on its way, wow. I knew the ideas for Zoo had been building up for awhile but this is crazy, I have no idea what they made this out of in, what, probably 1986? This is not a high-quality production by any means but I'm addicted, probably by the very Bono-stream-of-conscious weirdness of it.