U2 kept their soapboxing excesses at bay and delivered an uplifting and effective mix of new material and bona-fide classics without losing focus on what they do best.

U2 — They have nothing left to win and nothing left to prove. Photo: John Wright.

By Matt Hanson

Unless you’re already a believer, U2 can be a hard band to love. As a first-record-I-ever-bought fan, it can be exhausting to defend against their legions of haters. I honestly don’t see why it’s such a bad thing when rock stars take an interest in something other than selling tickets and consumer hedonism and start thinking about the world outside the stadium. It’s better for the music, too. You’ve got to give them credit for consistency — U2 have been putting out unabashedly socially conscious music since before the Reagan era.

The problem is, Bono’s tendency for benevolent bombast can be very exasperating. Sincerity and earnestness are fine, but even I threw my hands up in disgust when I saw Bono’s smirking, sun-glassed visage in an Ipad commercial, crooning something about every generation having a chance to change the world. When I spent some time in Dublin, the locals I talked to badmouthed the band for not basing their multi-million dollar franchise in their cash-strapped homeland. The complaints of the anti- U2 crowd suddenly started to make more sense.

So when I got the opportunity to see them play their fourth Boston show at the TD Garden Wednesday night, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Happily, U2 kept their soapboxing excesses at bay and delivered an uplifting and effective mix of new material and bona-fide classics without losing focus on what they do best.

The show opened with the leadoff from their new album The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone), which worked even if the song itself didn’t sound anything like the band it ostensibly paid tribute to, “I Will Follow,” their still-catchy first single, segued into a series of interesting new songs based on the early days in Dublin: “Iris (Hold Me Close),” a moving elegy about the untimely death of Bono’s mother, the surging “Cedarwood Road,” and the affectionate “Song for Someone.”

U2 has never been shy of utilizing onstage multimedia, and at several points Bono sang from the inside of a large illuminated screen on which was projected moving cartoon images of the old neighborhood. The concept was promising — playing live, literally from ‘within’ the imagery of the music, which itself reminisced about days gone by — but in execution it was somehow both overly simple and visually confusing. The intermission put the massive digital screen to better use with the Zooropa– esque postmodern mix of scrambled imagery and surreal text set to an edgy remix of “The Fly,” one of Achtung Baby’s best cuts.

The strongest visual and emotional impact came in the juxtaposition between the old warhorse “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and the brand new “Raised By Wolves.” The latter included a stark, accusatory beat of the military drum under an affecting video montage of the victims of the still-unresolved 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombing, the deadliest in Ireland’s violent history.

It wouldn’t be a U2 concert without a little sermonizing, and Bono was in fine form. Prefacing almost every song with an anecdote or a joke, the concert contained plenty of enjoyable chattiness. But it didn’t detract from the energy of the show. The enthusiastic, packed house was happy to let Bono opine and speechify about his gratitude for charitable contributions to fight HIV in Africa and to give ‘Boston Strong’ several wordy but well-meaning shout-outs. Gone are the garish costumes, all glittering leather and devil horns, of his hyper-ironic ’90 stage persona. Bono seems more comfortable in his own skin now, bringing up people from the audience to dance and singing happy birthday to an elated 13-year-old fan.

As a whole, U2 seems less anxious to explore the ironies of rock and roll mixed with righteous idealism and let the music speak for itself. The band as a whole seemed perfectly content to be playing decades-old hits like “With or Without You” and “Where The Streets Have No Name.” This is probably because at this point in their lengthy, highly praised and profitable careers, they really do have nothing to win and nothing left to prove.

It was wonderful to see that U2 still does redemptive uplift like no one else. The soaring, anthemic chorus of “Pride (In the Name of Love)” showed that even in the depressing post-Ferguson era, the mid-eighties tribute to Martin Luther King is still inspiring no matter how many times you’ve heard it before.

The concert’s closing moment is also the band’s best way to refute the critics, because there wasn’t any self-righteousness or grandstanding possible. The Edge had barely started strumming the first notes of “One,” arguably their finest song, as the packed house spontaneously rose to its feet and began to sing every single lyric word for word, one but not the same, all without Bono or anyone else feeling the need to add a word in edgewise.

Matt Hanson is a critic for the Arts Fuse living outside Boston. His writing has appeared in The Millions, 3QuarksDaily and Flak Magazine (RIP), where he was a staff writer. He blogs about movies and culture for LoveMoneyClothes. His poetry chapbook was published by Rhinologic Press.