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New Album Info: Reviews General / Articles / Reviews / Singles / Videos / Booklet (Page 1)(Page 2)(Page 3)(Page4)(Page 5)(Page 6) (Page 7)(Page 8) CNN - 11/17/00 By David John Farinella That giant whooshing sound you hear is the collective breath of relief coming from U2 fans around the world. The band that defined anthem-like protest alternative-rock during the 1980s is back. Well, nearly. "All That You Can't Leave Behind" is not exactly akin to the guitar-centered fiery rockers U2 released during the 1980s, nor is it like any of the techno-laced junk from the 1990s. Rather, it is a blend that's sure to please few, irritate some, and land flaccidly in the middle of modern-day musical relevance. It's not that the album is boring; it's just not what's happening now. Sure, that's a good thing. Do we really need another Limp Bizkit release? But for the first time in their careers, the lads of U2 are standing at the crossroads: Are they hip? Are they revolutionary? Or are they soft? Instead of answering any of those questions, the band has offered up a timid collection that catches fire about as often as it lays flat. Granted, expectations are tremendously high for one of the world's biggest rock 'n' roll bands, but U2 doesn't live up to the hype this go round. One of band's the charms, even during the, well ... interesting last decade, was Bono's charged look at the state of the world. He penned lyrics filled with outrage and called listeners to arms. On this latest disc, we get such timeless lyrics as "Grace, it's the name for a girl" in "Grace," the album's closer. A name for a girl? Come on. Surely there were better songs thrown off "The Joshua Tree" (1987) than this clunker. And it seems that,instead of looking outward, the songwriter is peering into his own soul. One would assume, with his breadth of community work and leadership, that Bono's better than this. He has been in the past. Refreshingly, the band is as tight as ever. The Edge drenches his guitars in a multitude of effects, while still spinning out his trademark lead lines and rhythm parts. Larry Mullen Jr. adds a touch of humanity to the number of synthesized percussion and drum loops, and bassist Adam Clayton remains one of the most rock-solid players in the business. Even the assorted keyboard parts added by the production team of Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno add to the musical layers, rather than dominating them. The album has its highlights. "Stuck in a Moment" is an inspirational number that combines a modern-day gospel feel with an ascending horn line and a slightly faint, yet powerfully flavorful organ. "Elevation" is a throwback to 1993's "Zooropa," and "Wild Honey" is a nifty Rolling Stones-esque rocker that could have fit comfortably on "October," the band's 1981 offering. "All That You Can't Leave Behind" is a nice reminder of where the band came from two decades ago. Hopefully, U2 will continue finding those touchstones while pushing forward and serving as a living example to younger artists. A multitude of new performers could learn much -- musically, lyrically, emotionally and spiritually -- from U2. Illawarra Mercury By Greg Totman U2 has constantly re-invented its image throughout its celebrated career. The Irish band remains ahead of the rest with packed arenas and a back catalogue that will never date. So what does a band do when seemingly it has done it all? Personnel still intact, U2 - Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen - has re-employed the production and creative talents of Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, who are again proving to be one of the most successful marriages in modern music. Go back and listen to previous U2 outings The Joshua Tree and The Unforgettable Fire and you will gather a rough sketch of the quality of All That You Can't Leave Behind. Couple with that a band that has grown and matured with its songwriting and you have a tour de force of 12 tracks par excellence. All That You Can't Leave Behind is songs of peace, love and harmony, although the song New York sees the knife wielded on the American city. Overall it is a breathtaking experience and impossible to dislike. Orlando Sentinel - 11/24/00 By Matt Gilmour War. The Joshua Tree. Achtung Baby. To this list of landmark U2 albums we now can add the recently released All That You Can't Leave Behind, a sparkling diamond in the rough of today's pop music scene. U2 proves once again that making five-star quality pop music requires more than canned beats and goopy harmonies. It is better to have hooks that hold up after repeated listens, vocals filled with unadulterated emotional projection, a perfectionist's ambition and meticulous instrumentation. With 20 years of experience behind them, U2 has created a pop-rock masterpiece. Bono is the band's vocalist, and his talents have been pushed to the forefront on this album. His voice, although showing signs of age, has retained all the power and range that made him one of rock's best and most recognizable singers. The band's guitarist, the Edge, who consistently is brilliant on each album makes no exception here. His guitar goes in and out of songs as is necessary in various aesthetic tasks. Bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. also are in top form. One of the best and most underappreciated rhythm sections in rock, Clayton and Mullen contribute the steady beats and subtle grooves that accentuate the music's pervasive soul. All That You Can't Leave Behind is a classicist rock album -- equal parts rhythm and blues, soul, rock and pop. There was lots of talk of U2 returning to its '80s sound, completely abandoning the electronica stylings of its last three albums, but this is not entirely true. While the techno textures that highlighted the band's '90s work is indeed stripped away, synthesizers are present on this album but merely to add to the overall feel of the album. And the band does not return to its '80s sound, but instead pushes forward, using the basic instruments as guides to greatness. The album opens with the uplifting "Beautiful Day," a rocking anthem that musically would not sound out of place on 1983's War. This is followed by the equally sweet "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of," a gorgeous slice of gospel pop in which Bono channels the spirits of the blues and lifts the souls of the listeners. "Elevation" is a heavy dance-rocker, reminiscent of 1993's Zooropa album. The volume then is turned down for the stunning "Walk On," a beautifully crafted pop gem, easily the band's best ballad since "One." A touching portrait of a broken relationship, "Kite" is Edge's tour de force. He co-wrote the lyrics, arranged the strings, sang backup vocals and, of course, tied it all together with sounds of his guitar floating through the song like a cloud. "Peace on Earth" is a poignant elegy rooted in the continuing violence in Ireland that echoes the same themes and urgent plea of the band's staple "Sunday Bloody Sunday." U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind is just that -- a remarkable, unforgettable album of songs, more than ready for repeated listens. Q Magazine -
December 2000 By Mark Blake Edge squints into a compact mirror, checking the detail on that moustache. Bono ponders Third World debt and a future missive to Kofi Annan. Adam Clayton leafs through the latest Italian Vogue - wow, a Versace pollution mask - Larry Mullen Jr thinks about Passengers Original Soundtracks 1 and scowls. Possibly... Only U2 themselves know what went on inside the lemon. The rest of us can just speculate. Every evening on their 1997-'98's PopMart tour they clambered into the windowless pod. Accompanied by the din of unseen stadium crowds, it would hover across the stage before splitting open to reveal the band. Locked in there night after night, what did U2 talk about? That next time they should make an old-fashioned rock'n'roll record and leave the big yellow thing at home? Possibly. U2's last album, Pop, was a bumpy ride, inspired, but overreaching and messy. Discotheque deserves a place in the Top 20 Greatest U2 Songs Of All Time, but it's a brave soul who returns to Please or Wake UP Dead Man by their own volition. Worryingly, the latter trailed off with a dour Bono intoning, "Jesus, Jesus help me I'm alone in this world and a fucked-up world it is too." Just how bad is it to be the singer in U2? Never mind, the group had been felled by pre-millennium tension three years early. Poor lambs. Thank God
then that they've perked up. All That You Can't
Leave Behind's first shot across the bows is the single
Beautiful Day. Its bobbing, spacey intro cues up a
toppling, familiar guitar pattern. Bursting with
optimism, the lasting impression is of the singer
gamboling Julie Andrews-style across rolling hills, arms
outstretched, glad to be alive. But all the while
singing in a grown-up voice and reminding us that this is
the work of 40-year-olds with the life experiences to
match. The choral interlude two minutes and 44
seconds in is a flash of pure genius, and Beautiful Day
makes for what Neil Tennant once called a great "ice
rink record" - in that it probably sounds wonderful
when pumped out of distorted speakers at a provincial
skating rank. Only an utter bastard then would
mention the ghost of A-ha's The Sun Always Shines On TV
passing through the room when Bono roars "Touch, me,
take me to that other place." Sorry. Elevation is a reminder then that U2's brave new world isn't exclusively hearts and flowers. The chainsaw guitars are left over from Achtung Baby and it has the unusual distinction of being the first rock song since Mercury Rev's Holes to mention moles. In this case the little nocturnal blighters are "digging in a hole, digging up my soul." Edge slips his leash halfway through, suggesting it will sound monumental live. Throughout the album, the lyrics return to themes of redemption, of rebirth. "I'm not afraid of anything in this world, there's nothing you can throw at me that I haven't already heard," Bono insists during Stuck In A Moment... Perhaps the ain't-life-grand theme is a by-product of U2's rediscovered confidence in what they do; maybe the singer has negotiated some personal crisis and emerged on top. Either way it invests much of All That You Can't Leave Behind with an upbeat quality that partners the music perfectly. Then they come within a hair's breadth of screwing it up. Walk On might have been left of '84's The Unforgettable Fire. Jangly Edge guitar fill here; single note piano motif there; big Bono bellow everywhere. The webcam in the studio would surely have captured the band laughing guiltily at the unbridled U2-ness of it all. It's heartfelt certainly but just a tad to obvious. Fifteen years ago, Jim Kerr would have gone down to the crossroads - in his ladies' leggings and everything - to sell his soul for this one. Kite's snoozy melody offers a change of tack and Bono's strongest vocal so far. Chockful of stormy emotion and middle-aged angst ("I'm a ma-a-a-n not a child"), Bono sees it out tackling 21st Century issues and gamely trying to rhyme "new media" with "big idea." The wag. Five songs in and All That You Can't Leave Behind's general tenor is already clear. Pop's clashing soundscapes have been put aside, technology reigned in, and nobody is striving to remake The Beatles' "White Album." U2 have turned the clock back to doing what U2 used to do. That it's so uncomplicated almost takes time to get used to. The album's two biggest curveballs are pitched side by side. Spice Girls collaborator Richard Stannard has a hand in the low-key, Motown-ish In A Little While. Edge does a clipped, Ernie Isley thing and Bono gives it his best Smokey Robinson. It could have been horrible but isn't, whizzing by in a charming three-and-a-half minutes and making way for Wild Honey: romantic country-rock, which unlike all other non-Americans playing romantic country-rock isn't trying to be Gram Parsons. God and his offspring drop by for Peace On Earth, another dogged bid for a Christmas Number 1 (see Pop's If God Will Send His Angels) and another potential stumbling block negotiated. Bono takes Him Upstairs to task and, while there's a sense of revisiting old ground, Peace On Earth wears its sentiments so unselfconsciously that the listener is immediately disarmed. Slipping in on its coat-tails, the squally guitars and widescreen lyrics on When I Look At The World are cast from familiar U2 moulds. But while it taxis along inoffensively enough it never quite manages to get airborne. New York delivers a truly intimate peek into Bonoworld. The singer recently forked out for an apartment in Manhattan and, like Miami on Pop. It's another song exploring U2's "unquenchable thirst" for America. A needling guitar and Larry Mullen's pattering drums soundtrack but travelogue and Bono's intriguing lyric: "In New York I lost it all to you and your vices/Still, I'm staying on to figure out my midlife crisis/Hit an iceberg in my life/But here I am still afloat." Conclusion: Big Apple consumes Big Man. In contrast, Grace has Bono mopping his brow after all that inner-city/emotional turmoil. Brian Eno seems to have roused himself for this one, pressing various Eno buttons while the others turn in the dictionary definition of understated. Grace would have been a perfect ending, but the arrival of the non-listed The Ground Beneath Her Feet notches up another little victory. First featured on last year's Million Dollar Hotel soundtrack, the whinnying keyboard figure - imagine ambient Spaghetti Western music - and Bono's impassioned "Go lightly down your darkened way" make it on of this album's key moments and a smart, dramatic closer. Bono's recent dismissal of the "progressive rock lurgy" currently infecting much rock music gave a revealing insight into U2's current mindset. Stepping outside of their natural environment ensured their longevity in the '90s, stepping back in seems to have given them a fresh boost. For all Zooropa and Pop's pushing of the envelope, limiting themselves to rock's core ingredients has given the band a new challenge. Certainly, not since The Joshua Tree have U2 sounded so like U2 but, with songs of this startling calibre, right now being U2 is no bad thing. Juice.net There was a moment during the last night of the PopMart tour that was rock at its most grandiose. The mechanical lemon was tucked away and the world's largest television was on the blink. It was raining. The four members of U2 stood on the portable stage in the centre of the Sydney Football Stadium as the rain, highlighted by spotlights, fell gently on us all in big fat drops. There appeared to be nothing between us; the singer, the song and a hundred thousand of us. Anyone can build a big TV but very few can engender that sort of intimacy. That's magic. That's charisma. The shortcomings of the past two U2 albums weren't that they had 'gone disco' but that they hadn't played to their strengths; that intimacy. The title of this, the tenth U2 album, begs the question: what can't you do without? The answer, I guess, is soul. Let's forget all that crap about the Irish/Celtic spirit and saving the world and ironic takes on the nature of stardom and what you have left is primo quality pop melodies, generally intelligent lyrics, a rhythm section that sits sublimely in the pocket and a vocalist that can hit the high notes. In anyone's book that defines soul, from Aretha to Al Green to the Velvet Underground, and that's what U2 can't leave behind; who they are. Way back 20 years ago, U2's first album, Boy, snuck into the world, a mishmash of Billy Bragg and Joy Division. Eleven years later, their Achtung Baby helped to redefine rock and themselves. Nowadays rock is on the back foot. Childish, churlish rubbish like the Backstreet Boys dominates not only the charts but the pages of once-respected journals. As Bono says on this record, these days it's hip hop that drives the big cars. So where do troupers like Adam and Edge and Larry and Bono fit in? Back with the truth and three chords, but now augmented by the skills of Brian Eno and producer Daniel Lanois. Edge's guitar lines are still explosive; dive-bombing attacks and smooth detonations as the songs hit the chorus. Forgetting about the big singles and the world peace anthems, the heart and soul of U2 is captured on track five. "Kite" features the line "I'm a man and not child" while still acknowledging change and serendipity, regret and hope all intermingled. It's a song that swirls with concrete strings and anchored by bass and drums who hold back and stretch the tension; amplifying the moral dilemmas of the lyric through understatement and finally Bono's poetic musings. The rest of the album revolves around "Kite" -- some tracks rockier, some schmaltzier ("Stuck In A Moment" is as catchy as ABBA), some politics, some spiritual questing and a bit of a knees-up. No longer embarrassed about being "the last of the rock stars", U2 have recorded one of the best albums of the last two decades. Most of their work in the past has revolved around journeys -- The Joshua Tree, Berlin, the unexplored regions of electronic music. Sometimes though, it is as well and as interesting to travel into your heart as to seek out foreign places. |
