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New Album Info: Reviews General / Articles / Reviews / Singles / Videos / Booklet (Page 1)(Page 2)(Page 3)(Page 4)(Page 5)(Page 6)(Page 7)(Page 8) Washington Post - 11/1/00 By David Segal U2 has spent the past decade in the loving embrace of some memorable floozies. The band ditched its rock and blues foundations in 1990 and fell hard for techno-dance, a passion it amplified on "Achtung Baby." It was smitten three years later by moody minimalist electronica on "Zooropa," followed by another tryst with synthesized dance tunes on 1997's "Pop," a chaotic meditation on turn-of-the-century consumerism. These affairs were not meant to last, but they were rarely dull. For a band trying to stay relevant as it ages, this kind of aesthetic promiscuity is essential. Bono, the group's chameleon-like lead singer, and U2's three other members have long been willing to down a few stiff drinks and proposition the freshest and most fetching young things at pop's never-ending cocktail party of ideas. Just ask Madonna, one of U2's few rivals in terms of longevity: To get near the charts after two decades in the business takes a Lothario's sense of adventure. While "All That You Can't Leave Behind," the band's 10th album, features some of U2's signature restlessness, it's more the sound of a band that would like to settle down, at least for a moment. Nearly everything about the album--including its title and its cover, which features the quartet standing in an airport, as though back from an extended vacation--signals a homecoming of sorts. Unfortunately, like a lot of homecomings, this one seems awfully dull about three minutes after the welcome-back salutations are over. With the help of producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, who first collaborated with U2 16 years ago, "All" has a gauzy feel that seems to wrap the band in a velvety new space-age scrim. But peel away this outer layer and you're left with some surprisingly bland music. And if Bono's fortune-cookie lyrics seemed grating when he still hadn't found what he was looking for, they're no easier to digest now that he's narrowed his search. "I'm just tring to find a decent melody, a song that I can sing in my own company," he explains in the gospel-inflected "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of." It's a pleasant shock on this and other songs to hear again the whirligig guitar scratchings of the Edge (David Evans to his mum), even if that echo-drenched sound is largely buried, rather than filling every spare inch of space as it did during the early days of the Dublin-born band. And Bono seems almost relieved to drop the alter egos he conjured during previous outings--the Fly for "Achtung Baby," and MacPhisto for "Zooropa"--and bellow like a rock star again. On songs like "Elevation" and "Kite" he's back to full-throated, arena-rock decibel levels. The band, along with Lanois and Eno, deserves credit for bucking the new thin-is-in craze in pop. Taking a cue from the latest trends in dance electronica, Radiohead, Madonna and rappers like Jay-Z have all recently made emaciated albums, as though they ran out of cash and had to downsize the band. U2 already went through an anorexic phase; "Numb," the single from "Zooropa," was little more than a beat and a passel of buzzes. Here the band offers up a refrigerator full of noise. Two years in the making and the result of months in the studio, "All" displays care, craftsmanship and a fullness that are obviously the work of pros. Touches like the robot beeps that kick off "Elevation" and the Beatlesque Mellotron that opens "Kite" give the album a finely wrought feel on every tune. If only they were better tunes. Most of the songs open softly, then are unleashed with full blasts of sound when the chorus rolls around, a formula that, though well tested, can't rescue "Beautiful Day," the album's first single, a wisp that offers little but optimism and vanilla homilies. ("It's a beautiful day, don't let it go away.") This upbeat album is filled with biblical nostrums ("Heaven on Earth, we need it now") and travel advice ("In New York summers get hot, well into the hundreds"), but the "decent melody" that Bono seeks largely eludes him here. The exception is the stirring "In a Little While," which takes flight courtesy of some Keith Richards-like chords and proves just how earthbound the rest of the album truly is. Maybe you can't go home. Or maybe Bono has been so busy fighting for debt relief for the Third World--a cause that's enjoyed startling success, by the way--that the whole songwriting thing has been back-burnered. Whatever the reason, "All That You Can't Leave Behind" is enough to make you hope that U2 won't hang out at home for long. Stay for tea, gentlemen, then pack your bags and find another exotic lover. Billboard - 11/4/00 From the outset, one thing is perfectly clear on U2's first set since 1997's "Pop": The lads have returned to rock. Scant seconds into the album-opener (and first single) "Beautiful Day," the Edge's signature guitar riffs rip through the track, urging his bandmates to deliver their most impassioned performances in years. The chaotic electronic density of U2's last few efforts has been replaced by sticky, bite-size tunes -- sporting candy-sweet choruses that are often underlined by unabashed words of love. Bono is in superior voice here, darting from his instantly recognizable caterwaul to more subtle whispers and chants. He even dabbles in a little Philly-flavored soul on the hitworthy rock ballad "Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of." Of course, U2 comments on the state of world affairs, doing so with exemplary eloquence on the companion cuts "Peace On Earth" and "When I Look At The World." Ultimately, though, the most sterling moments of this fine set are the unassuming ones, like the simple, acoustic "Wild Honey" and the soft-edged "Grace" -- both of which have meticulous melodies that linger in the brain long after the music has stopped. A most welcome return from one of rock's truly great bands. Jam! - 10/28/00 By John Sakamoto More than any other rock band to emerge in the post-punk era, U2 has both cultivated the notion of subtext and had it enthusiastically foisted upon them. A disproportionate amount of the group's identity is tied to the ever shifting perception of its larger intent -- "The Joshua Tree" as grand, mainstream move, "Pop" as attempted accommodation with "dance" music, and so forth -- usually with various members' eager complicity. It is, ultimately, what sets U2 apart from every other stadium act of the past 20 years. The subtext of "All That You Can't Leave Behind" (in stores Tuesday) is a familiar one: the abandonment of the big, ambitious concept in favour of the simple pleasures of The Song. It is a message U2 has been delivering so efficiently in interviews, it occasionally sounds more like a marketing plan than a philosophy. It also reminds us that this is a band whose work benefits significantly from the presence of what Bono refers to a couple of times on the new album as "the big i-DEE-ah". If you haven't listened to it lately, dust off your copy of "Pop" and play "Please", "Last Night On Earth", "If You Wear That Velvet Dress", or "If God Will Send His Angels". On their own, they don't sound fundamentally different from the majority of songs on half a dozen other U2 albums. But place them next to the handful of tracks that actually express "Pop"'s "electronic" aesthetic -- "Discotheque", "Mofo", "Do You Feel Loved" -- and they take on a dimension that transforms them into something more than they would otherwise be. In the absence of that type of conceptual framework, the 11 songs on "All That You Can't Leave Behind" are forced to stand or fall on their own individual merits. In this age of the context-killing Napster, the good-to-bad-to-indifferent ratio is pretty much what we've come to expect: "When I Look At The World", "Kite" and, especially, "Walk On" can stand alongside all but a handful of U2's best material. "New York", "In A Little While", "Beautiful Day" and "Elevation" will all pack infinitely more power in concert than they do here. And the rest varies from pleasant ("Stuck In A Moment", "Wild Honey") to mildly annoying ("Grace", "Peace On Earth"). That last song is perhaps the album's most problematic. An achingly heartfelt plea for peace, its lyrics are among the most nakedly personal Bono has ever written. But unlike, say, "Pride (In The Name Of Love)" or "Sunday Bloody Sunday", this is an anthem that suffers from both the lack of an obvious target to rail against and an utter absence of musical intensity, as encapsulated by an unspeakably cornball drum part. For those of us who stubbornly continue to greet each new U2 album with an unreasonably heightened sense of anticipation, that just doesn't seem like enough; not in a year in which other bands (Radiohead being the most obvious example) are gleefully releasing music whose ambition clearly exceeds their ability -- not the other way around. Perhaps more than anything else, "All That You Can't Leave Behind" leaves behind an impression that even the group's staunchest critics would not apply to any other U2 album: That this is the sound of a band that has lost its nerve Calgary Sun - 10/27/00 By Mike Bell As with each of U2's studio releases since 1992's Achtung Baby, when they announced to the world that, for better or for worse, they would no longer walk the stylistic straight and narrow, there's been tremendous speculation as to which route the Irish quartet would travel with All That You Can't Leave Behind. Further exploration of their "ironic" embrace of the electronic movement? A return to their sweeping Unforgettable Fire days? A raw and emotive rock 'n' roll record a la War? Or something else entirely? Well, actually, the answer lies somewhere in the middle -- the middle of the road to be exact. Produced by old friends Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, the ninth U2 studio album finds Bono, The Edge, Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton spreading themselves so thin that the result is understandably flat, and a mediocre rock record by anyone's standards, let alone arguably the biggest band on the planet. Not that All That You Can't Leave Behind is like any other U2 album -- for the quartet it's a decidedly positive and, overall, relatively new sound. Then again, what does it say about a band when something that's fresh to them comes across so stale? Though it's not in stores until Tuesday, here's a rundown of what to expect from the 11 songs when the wrapper comes off. Beautiful Day: Attempting an exuberant, airy pop song, this is instead the dullest single the band has ever released (yes, including Numb). The hook is so muted, that even after the radio and video blitz, it still remains a distant wish. Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of: "I'm just trying to find a decent melody," drones Bono in the first verse of this rather hymnal Rattle and Hum throwback. He still hasn't found what he's looking for. Elevation: There are definite shades of Achtung Baby with the muffled electric guitar and pseudo-Manchester bump and jangle. Unfortunately, any momentum is killed by a goofy Bono vocal break. Walk On: If you make it past the spoken word intro you'll find a straightforward U2 ballad strained almost entirely of emotion. Kite: Another ballad, this one features the siren-like dive-bomb guitar sound they've toyed with before and some beautiful synthesizer textures. Though the lyrics are a tad precious, musically it's the emotive exact opposite of Walk On. In A Little While: Reportedly recorded the morning after a hard night on the town, this is perhaps the most honest track on All That.... Bono's wonderful hangover rasp and the slow swinging groove make it an album highlight. Wild Honey: Simple, Stonesy roots pop love tune that makes a simple connection and lets go just as easily -- disposable rock at its finest. Peace On Earth: Bono's rather transparent attempt to pen a new Imagine. Very, very weak. When I Look At The World: Take every song off of The Joshua Tree, remove every last ounce of originality and passion they contained, and subsequently imparted, and you have an idea of the impact this Everysong has. New York: An extremely lazy and cold song that plods on for five pointless minutes. And, well, try as desperately and as painfully as he does, Bono proves once and for all that he sure ain't no Lou Reed. Grace: As this morose, jazz-tinged yawner closes album number nine, it's the perfect example of why this U2 record will be the one that you return to the least Edmonton Sun -10/28/00 By Mike Ross For sale: One giant, lemon-shaped mirror ball, slightly scratched. Previous owners have grown out of such toys. While U2's last album Pop was an experimental foray into the world of electronica - the capper in the weird dream that the '90s turned out to be for this Irish band - U2's latest pop masterpiece (out Tuesday) is a refreshingly simple, back-to-basics rock record. Guitarist the Edge calls it the "greatest record we've ever made," and he's not lying. This is just about perfect. It's a powerful, vivid expression of emotion and soul uncluttered by frills. Hardly a note is wasted. Some were even tossed out, like Mick Jagger's vocal tracks in the gospel-tinged Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of. The band, with production help by both Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, didn't think it suited the song. So goodbye Mick. U2 is not a band for putting celebrity guests over its music. It might be easier to list the weak links - The Kite is kind of a la-di-da kind of song, but the rest is excellent. The music is uplifting, soulful, meaningful, haunting, melodic, aggressive, subtle ... consult your own reviewer's thesaurus. The band's managed to take influences from almost everything they've done in the past and boil them down to their primal essence. The result is elegant rock 'n' roll at its best. There's a lot more depth than Beautiful Day, one of the strongest singles the band's ever produced. In a Little While evokes the soul sound of the '60s, helped nicely by Bono's expressive, raspy vocals. You can hear shades of Lou Reed in New York - a gritty heartbreak song that captures the spirit of life in the big city. And Peace on Earth speaks for itself as a heartfelt plea for an end to all war: "No one cries like a mother cries for peace on Earth. She never got to say goodbye, to see the colour in his eyes. Now he's in the dirt." It's an amazing song. It's clear from this album that U2 is still able to make music that means something without succumbing to the excesses of superstardom. After 21 years in the game, this may be their greatest accomplishment. Toronto Sun - 10/29/00 By Jane Stevenson Do these Irish rock veterans reclaim their signature soaring sound from the '80s on their latest album, with the help of heyday producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno? Yes and no. There is really only one stadium anthem among the 13 tracks, in stores Tuesday, and that's the euphoric first single, Beautiful Day. It grows on you with repeated listenings primarily because of the brilliant, clanging guitar sounds that only U2's The Edge could make. Also thoroughly appealing is the midtempo pop number Wild Honey, which sounds unlike anything U2 has done before, and the low-key but pretty Peace On Earth and the more inspirational When I Look At The World. Otherwise, the fearless foursome have abandoned, for the most part, the wildly adventurous sounds they embraced in 1991's Achtung Baby, 1993's Zooropa and 1997's Pop. One notable exception is the wonderfully sexy, funky dance song Elevation, which is equal parts hip-hop, rock and electronica. The song also finds frontman Bono, hooting in falsetto and grunting throughout, on a roll lyrically as he croons-raps: "A star, lit up like a cigar, strung out like a guitar, maybe you can educate my mind, explain all these controls, can't sing but I've got soul, the goal is elevation." My main complaint about this record is the overwhelming focus on bland, rather than bold, ballads, whether it's the rock-retro-soul of Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of and In A Little While, or Walk On and Kite. The latter two both contain some lovely vocals and The Edge's clanging guitar sound, but ultimately evoke U2 songs we've heard before. My expectations were high for this because of the Lanois-Eno combination and all the pre-release talk that this would be another The Unforgettable Fire or The Joshua Tree. Clearly, it is not. Time - 11/6/00 By Josh Tyrangiel When a band decides to focus on the craft of songwriting, you know it's coming off a lemon, as U2 is. But Pop was the anomaly in a career that's been dedicated, and now rededicated, to making great rock music. The 11 tracks, produced by U2 veterans Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, reveal a band exhausted with its own irony, and aging, if not always gracefully, at least honestly. Beautiful Day and When I Look at the World are Bono full-voice blasters, while the melancholic Kite and New York are about people who still haven't found what they're looking for. But God bless 'em, the members of U2 are still looking. Fortune - 11/13/00 By Chris Nashawaty Good news from the Emerald Isle: Bono & Co. have finally snapped out of their delusional flirtation with icky techno fluffery and returned to their bread and butter--plaintive white-boy soul shimmering with delicious guitar riffs. Welcome back from the abyss. Atlanta
Journal-Constitution 11/2/00 By Nick Tate It's not
quite a comeback album. But U2's stunning new release,
"All That You Can't Leave Behind," is just the
kind of back-to-basics record fans had hoped the Irish
rockers still had in them, under all the techno-tripping
glitz of the 1990s. The old U2 mix --- Bono's soaring
wail, the Edge's chiming wall-of-sound guitar, the
chugging rhythms of bassist Adam Clayton and drummer
Larry Mullen Jr. --- sounds as fresh and stirring as
ever, replacing the sci-fi disco thumping of 1997's
"Pop." And despite the fact that Bono's voice
is uncharacteristically ragged in places, "All That"
is the strongest and most All of which makes the record's title perfectly appropriate, as Bono and friends return to where they started from --- creating no-nonsense rock music with a ton of heart and soul. Welcome back, gents. Montreal
Gazette - 11/3/00 By Mark Lepage These are good days to be a rock band: diminished expectations, meaning liberation. And that is the correct formulation: to be a rock band, not in one. U2's conviction in the alchemy of the rock unit survived the late '90s. The irony graft of Pop succeeded due to the inevitability of the merch machine (and was critically punched in hindsight); but for all the grandstanding, Bono never looked comfortable in those pants. Intuition said that the commercially necessary affair with Mistress Postmodern would end and he'd go back home to the wife, Sincerity. And now, a reading from the Book of Bono. Opening with the production gigantism and career summation of Beautiful Day, this is the challenge the band claims it is. There are cliched phrases ("Take me to that other place!") and a familiarity to it all (Eno and Lanois must get their mail at the U2 studio by now) because this band is not ashamed to be U2. Half the time
it plays like the diary of a lapsed husband; the other
half gets religion. Both make sense, We haven't necessarily been to the Hibernian soul of In a Little While or the playfulness of Wild Honey, although Peace on Earth is exactly the Christmas carol of global warming (as in love, not meteorology) it seems to be. When I Look at the World grafts a blues move as an opening bit. New York follows Bono's dark weekend of the soul by channeling a looser version of early-'80s sonics. Grace might as well be from a listener-friendly liturgy, a closing homily. The songs are listed in their entirety because U2 is aiming every one of them at the charts. Call it an act of hubris, or an act of faith, but those who choose the former will miss out on a band whose friendliness with its own catalogue is matched only by its dedication to the form. Let's watch the tumblers roll over on Rock'n'Roll Salvation 2000. Houston
Chronicle - 11/2/00 By Michael D. Clark A glance at the cover of U2's new album, All That You Can't Leave Behind, makes it clear that the Irish supergroup is ushering in an era of refrain. The black-and-white snapshot of Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. stranded and confused in Paris' Charles De Gaulle airport is a vast departure from the slickness of recent albums. Zooropa and Pop danced with computer-enhanced images that mimicked the digitally manipulated bend of the music. For All That You Can't Leave Behind, there are no fancy embellishments or airbrushed cheekbones pixeled with color. The fuzzy, off-center photo is just four guys and one guitar wondering where to go next. It's left to interpretation what All That You Can't Leave Behind defines. One reading might imply a return to musical elements that made U2 the world's biggest rock group in the '80s. After stripping away the superstar parodies, fly glasses, shopping carts and computer static of a progressive '90s, all U2 couldn't leave behind was the political and emotional philosophizing couched in rousing anthems that brought the band its greatest success. The new songs welcome back the sonic possibilities of the Edge's guitar and the exploration of early American rock 'n' roll that propelled 1984's The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree three years later, an album that sold 15 million copies. There are hints of technology laced through All That You Can't Leave Behind, like a compromise for the generation that came to love U2 in the '90s. On the first single, Beautiful Day, the keyboard samples are there, but aren't running the show as they often did on Achtung Baby through the last studio album, 1997's Pop. Only Elevation has the large electronic bass fuzz and synthesizer fills by Brian Eno that sound left over from that era. Mixed with the rest of the album's vulnerability and raw power, it sounds robotic and stilted. Technology is put to use better on New York. The processed drum loops help explain the wonderful modern chaos of the Big Apple. Bono's harmonies with the Edge are shades of an even younger and more politically-minded U2. Beautiful Day is as warm and engaging as past single One. The difference is that here it is one of the harder rockers. On Achtung Baby, One was the token ballad. Besides the scholarly confidence of Bono's voice, the mostwelcome return is Edge's guitar leads, which primed past hits like Pride (In the Name of Love) and Where the Streets Have No Name. The jangling, echoey notes opening the chorus of Beautiful Day are the familiar chimes of a town square church bell The cut-loose strings on Walk On will sound like revelry to U2 soldiers nostalgic for I Will Follow or New Year's Day. There are other looks back at the band's pro-active anti-war past. Peace on Earth is a sequel to Sunday Bloody Sunday sung by the activist who has given all he can. The revolutionary question of "How long must we sing this song?" has been replaced with the solemn, "To tell the ones who hear no sound, whose sons are living in the ground, Peace on Earth." It's obvious that U2 has had its fill of an admitted self-indulgence with high life and consumer culture. It again seems transfixed by audience response and the roots of rock 'n' roll. Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of has shimmering, puddle-skipping chords wonderfully woven with snippets of choir harmonies. And it's easy to imagine a stadium singing, "Tell me, tell me, What's wrong with me," with Bono on When I Look at the World, like past sing-alongs I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For or 40. Next to a simple little tune like In a Little While, so obviously influenced by Ben E. King's R&B classic Stand By Me, it makes the prospects of U2's upcoming tour very exciting. The members of U2 have been anti-authority warriors, drifters searching for the American experience and satirists leading the march for a greedy and manipulative future. All That You Can't Leave Behind starts a fourth era for the band. They now stand where the veteran Rolling Stones did around Tattoo You or the bearded Beatles did at Abbey Road. In those instances one prospered and the other splintered. It will be interesting to see if U2 can continue to find what it's looking for. |
