In 2004, U2 offered a musical treatise on "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb."

Let my college grades attest to the fact that I'm no physicist or engineer, but deconstructing a weapon of mass destruction has to be easier than it was to conceptualize and pull off the show the epochal Irish band delivered Tuesday night in their sold-out Mohegan Sun Arena.

To report that U2 played 25 songs over two hours is accurate, but that's also like describing Hurricane Katrina by saying, "Well, there was some wind and rain. And flooding, I guess."

By now, no touring artist of arena- or stadium-headlining status can take the chance of just showing up and playing a set on a stage. Beatles at Shea Stadium? Not even one Roman Candle? Boo!

Well, it's a senses-working-overtime world and, for a concert experience to be competitive, the performance needs to be equal parts space-launch, super hero film, David Copperfield on acid, and a virtual reality tour of George RR Martin's brain. Let the record show that U2's "Songs of eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE" presentation, the finale on the American tour and their first-ever casino show, passed the "Spectacle Aspect" quiz in day-glo fashion.

The main stage at one end of the venue was connected to a smaller round platform at the other by a narrow, double-level runway bisecting the venue; each side had a hang-from-the-ceiling, diaphanous LED video-curtain. This enabled band members performing on or traversing these paths to "interact" with myriad images and messages projected on the screens. Oh: the lower catwalk was on hydraulics, too, just in case Bono needed to use a "see-saw" effect.

None of this was random. The tour is very much a conceptual account of U2's rise from their days as a schoolboy band in Dublin to their status as the biggest rock band in the world — up to the present, when it could be argued they've become an admittedly much-loved "legacy" act.

This is all depicted on their two most recent — and, I'd say, way underrated — albums, "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience." The visuals and special effects fleshed out the music in that context, and Bono's between-song tour-guide narrative worked to flesh out the story.

Oh, yeah. One might ask, in all of this, how did the songs sound? How well did the band play?

Insofar as it's possible to separate one element of the evening from another, U2 were pretty magnificent. Bassist Adam Clayton, Jr. and drummer Larry Mullen delivered martial rhythms or fourth-gear power with precision and dynamics. The Edge was at his distinctive best, coaxing from his six-string a cauldron of textures, sounds and rhythms that occasionally sounded like a guitar. Brilliant. And Bono was in full-throated glory, hitting virtually every sky-scraping note required. As part of the narrative, he also reprised his demonic Mr. MacPhisto alter ego from the "Zoo TV" tour.

The ideas of "America" and our potential as a country and how we can lead the world have always been topics of desperate fascination for U2, and these themes were also integrated into the evening (with a shout-out to Sen. Christopher Dodd, no less). Perhaps the emotional highlight of the entire show was a one-two punch of "Staring at the Sun" — about willful ignorance and stunningly underscored by triptych footage of white supremacists at Charlottesville — and the anthemic hymn "Pride (in the Name of Love)" with a simple image of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

By definition, the set list focused on material from the last few albums: "Love is All We Have Left," "The Blackout," "Lights of Home," "You're the Best Thing About Me," "Get Out of Your Own Way," "American Soul," "City of Blinding Lights," "Love is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way," and "Cedarwood Road." These are tunes that, because the world moves on, probably won't get their historical due. But they're still great.

They also sprinkled in older hits that fit the overall narrative and feel — "Sunday Bloody Sunday," "Gloria," "I Will Follow," "Vertigo," "Until the End of the World" and the wondrous set-closing "City of Blinding Lights."

It's interesting to speculate how the night might have gone if it'd just been U2 on a simple stage, playing and singing. But it was satisfying and overwhelming to know they maintain a "whatever it takes" spirit in their desire to convey a collective lifetime of rock music that summons feelings of compassion, activism, strength, faith and hope. Oh, and a tender coda: For the first time in their career, U2 proudly displayed a vulnerable but endearing sense of wistfulness that underscored where they've been and what they've taught us.