“Mankind is in the house!” declared Bono at the Corporate Name Stadium Where the Baltimore Ravens Play last night.

Look, you can’t stop him talking like that. Larry Mullen, Jr., U2’s ever-scowling drummer, has tried. And mankind was, empirically speaking, present in large part, to the tune of roughly 80,000 people. Because Bono suffered a back injury last year requiring the postponement of an entire once-paralyzed leg of U.S. concert dates, the U2 360 Tour — the largest gathering of arguably sentient carbon-based life since gaseous clouds of galactic dust first coalesced into blah blah blah — is still ticking; still crushing glum, stick-armed vegans like Bon Iver or whomever beneath its brawny carbon footprint, more than two years after the release of the album it was ostensibly designed to promote, No Line on the Horizon. (Critics liked it. You did not.)

But who’s here for the new stuff? Well: In the ’90s, U2 were Radiohead, basically, only more popular. They played their new songs, nearly all of them, every time, whether you wanted them or not. Artistic courage or crass commerce, depending on who you ask. (Team Courage, say I. I wasn’t ready for U2 to turn into Tom Petty yet, back then.)

To watch U2 muscle through their 135-minute, two dozenish-song set in Balmer last night was to feel nostalgic for those days. Since they last passed through the area, playing Corporate Name Stadium Where Dan Snyder’s Team Plays in September of ’09, they seem to have heard their fans loud and clear: We don’t like your new songs! Last night’s show — the last before U2 headlines the U.K.’s massive Glastonbury Festival this weekend — opened with four consecutive tunes from Achtung Baby, the occasion of U2’s first wholesale reinvention, set for re-release in a hand-sculpted-in-pure-unobtanium anniversary edition when it turns 20 this November. Where the 360 show once began with “Breathe”, a 21st century song that pulses and wails like Reagantide U2, it’s “Even Better Than the Real Thing” now. The fifth song was “I Will Follow”, from 1980, which according to my desk calendar was 150 years ago.

Those old tunes? Sounded stellar. You can never count on Bono’s voice to be there these days, but last night it made the gig and then some, with enough juice left over to power a solo “Amazing Grace” nearly two hours in.

Three No Line-ers survived the thresher of public opinion. “Get on Your Boots” remains a perfectly cromulent Frankenjam that nobody likes; the drop in audience enthusiasm between “I Will Follow” and that one was as impossible to miss as the sweaty guy who just boarded the elevator in front of you. But the disco version of “I Know I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” remains the only one of nefarious hundreds of U2 remixes to actually improve the song, and the audience responded with alacrity. The elegiac “Moment of Surrender” held its place as the finale, dedicated to departed E Street Band saxophonist Clarence “Big Man” Clemons and replete with recited lyrics from Bruce Springsteen’s “Jungleland” as the tune wobbled to a close.

You want deep cuts? I do! You can just shut right up! How ’bout two from Zooropa, the most underrated record U2 ever made? Introducing, “Stay (Faraway, So Close!)”, Bono spoke of the band’s fecund early ’90s period, when the song first emerged during sessions at Berlin’s Hansa Ton Studios in the weeks just after the Berlin Wall fell.

Later, he sang “Miss Sarajevo”, including the Italian verses sung by Luciano Pavarotti on the record. Whatever, I thought it was cool. And then, at last, Zooropa‘s swirling, raging, rarely-played title cut. That song, about feeling rootless and adrift in a media-saturated blarneyscape where truth is as elusive as borders, is old enough to vote this year. It sounded great, but seemed to be accompanied by a video misfire — the four band members were obscured behind the show’s fully, um, erect deployed but not-illuminated video-cone-thingy for the entirety of the tune.

You want politics? You want lectures? Eh, well, we still got ’em. Fewer than when U2 play inside the Beltway, mercifully, but there were still shout-outs shouted out to Eunice Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi and Art Modell, whom I am told is either the former owner of Baltimore’s very popular Fighting Ravens Football Squadron or the bass player in Widespread Panic.

Back in ’09, “Walk On” was preceded by a reminder of Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi‘s house arrest; she’s out now, but she wants you to remember Burma’s 2,300 other political prisoners, and she asked Bono to mention it.Archbishop Desmond Tutu made an appeal for the ONE campaign via video message, and was mistaken for Barack Obama by a kid standing in front of me, who was, in his defense, way high. And “Beautiful Day” featured a verse recited by Space Shuttle Commander Mark Kelly — the husband of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who is still recovering from a gunshot to the head she sustained back in January — from aboard the International Space Station.

Yes, I know U2 did this last time. Crikey, you don’t build a phone line to space and then only call once.*

*About that very long-distance call: Was it live? Anybody know? Heather Goss? Isn’t there a delay of a few minutes in surface-to-orbit communications, because of sunspots or because Bono might say “fuck” on TV? I only ask ‘cos when Bono used to duet with Lou Reed on the latter’s “Satellite of Love” back in the good old ZOO TV days, Lou’s part was recorded. The Edge called it “a jive moment — a live moment that isn’t live.” Wow, either that hat is too tight or he’s been hanging around with Bono too much.

Looky, here’s the math:

THE STADIUM-TESTED: Mysterious Ways, I Will Follow, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, Beautiful Day, Elevation, Pride (In the Name of Love), Vertigo, Sunday Bloody Sunday, One, Where the Streets Have No Name, With or Without You

HEY, THESE SONGS ARE LESS THAN TEN YEARS OLD: Get on Your Boots, Vertigo, City of Blinding Lights, (I Know I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t) Go Crazy Tonight, Moment of Surrender

THEY’RE STILL PLAYING THE FIRST THREE FROM THE JOSHUA TREE: Of course they are. At least “Bullet the Blue Sky” is finally getting a rest this tour.

DEEP-DISH DEEE-LISH!: Stay (Faraway, So Close!), Miss Sarajevo, Zooropa, Scarlet, Ultraviolet (Light My Way)

HEY, ISN’T BONO SINGING… A.K.A. WHY IS BONO SINGING… : You’ll Never Walk Alone, Amazing Grace

PLUS A FEW STRAY LINES OF: The Promised Land (Springsteen), Space Oddity (Bowie), The Wee Small Hours (Sinatra), Psycho Killer (Talking Heads), Discotheque (wait, that one’s a U2 song), Jungleland (Springsteen redux).

DID YOU CATCH WHAT BONO WAS SAYING ABOUT EUNICE SHRIVER DURING “PRIDE”?: No. But I wish he wouldn’t.