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U2

All That You Can't Leave Behind

by Jacob Kramer-Duffield

Heard Here Rating:
"This record will make more money than my daddy did in the Gulf War."

Dublin, Dec. 30, 1989: at the third of four year-end concerts, Bono says "...we have to go away andŠand dream it all up again." It is impossible to imagine that anyone, U2 included, could have known exactly where dreaming it all up again would take the group.

Beginning with the epic melancholy of 1991's Achtung Baby to the surreal distortions of Zooropa and the electronic dabbling of Pop, the band made a concerted effort to never stand still and never get stale. However, after the initial success (commercially and critically) of Achtung, U2's new and ever-changing musical bent drew criticism - from long-time fans who saw the band as overreaching, and in disappointing sales on the PopMart tour and in record stores.

With All That You Can't Leave Behind, U2 pulls a fantastic musical trick. They reinvent themselves again - as U2! Amazingly, the trick works - the album is already set to be the band's biggest commercial and critical success since Achtung Baby.

Now the question - why, and how, do they do it? The answer is simple enough: U2 got back to basics, and got back to what had got them here in the first place. Hence, "all that you can't leave behind," this is what the band is all about.

It isn't a daring album or revolutionary by any means - U2 has tried that. The album is a collection of some of the best pop/rock songs to come along in some time, songs crafted with great attention to melodies, harmonies and hooks. For that, you can thank the band, both for their music and for their reunion with the team of producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois (who teamed up for The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby).

The first single off the album, "Beautiful Day," is a good indicator of the album as a whole. It is perhaps the band's most optimistic album, and the song, obviously, reflects this. Yet there is a bittersweet tinge accompanying the overflowing sense of hope. While Edge's guitar reaches ecstatically for the sky, in the background Bono sings, "Touch me, take me to that other place/Reach me, I know I'm not a hopeless case," U2 again reaches its epitome: as makers not of music but of spirituality.

Showing just how on form they are in All That You Can't Leave Behind, U2 reaches that point of truly soul-touching music not once, not twice, but on at least half the songs on the album. "Walk On," and "Kite," especially exhibit the band's continued talent for epic emotion, and the album as a whole continually challenges not only your ears but your heart.

It is by no means a perfect album, and as a fan I could go through pecadilloes (not enough guitar solos for Edge, Bono's tendency toward more schmaltzy lyrics, Bono's at times strained voice), but none of those take away from the fact that this is great music, great in a way music rarely is, especially today.

U2 in the 1980s built themselves from a Dublin garage band into the biggest band in the world; in the 1990s, they tried to get bigger than that. Now, with the band together for more than 20 years and aged 40, they have decided not to sit still exactly, but to just be themselves and play the music that comes naturally. Good choice.

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Copyright © 2000, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 129, Number 7, November 3, 2000

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