'It was definitive arena rock, loud and clear, filling Pacific Coliseum here with surging sound. The Edge blared a distorted two-chord guitar riff, Larry Mullen Jr.’s tom-toms and cymbals landed hard on the backbeat, Adam Clayton’s bass throbbed down below, and Bono was unleashing “woo-oohs” in exultant falsetto.
'U2 has taken over the coliseum for a month of full-scale rehearsal to assemble its “Innocence and Experience” tour, which starts at Rogers Arena here on May 14, and the band was charging through “Elevation.” The stage was an austere geometry of fluorescent tubes; the song was triumphant. “Wow, that’s four years since we played that?” Bono said as the last chord faded. “Not bad!”

Jon Pareles of the New York Times has been in Vancouver, talking to the band ahead of the opening night. His story offers lots of new insight into how the  iNNOCENCE & eXPERIENCE production is coming together - and the narrative arc the band are exploring through the songs.

'The idea that there may be a whole swath of audience out there that don’t yet know they like the band is really turning us on. It makes us want to go out and find them if they’re there….They may not be there.’
Bono

‘The songs are the boss. They tell us what to do and they tell everyone in this building what to do. We’ve just got to unlock what the songs are asking and telling us what to do.’
Edge

'On May 14 we’re going to find out if the album worked and if the experiment worked. If people know those words and feel those songs, then the experiment was right.’
Bono

Read the whole story here.