U2 — All That You Can't Leave Behind cover

U2

Item: All That You Can't Leave Behind
Author: Jeffrey Overstreet

All That You Can't Leave Behind

(2000)

Reviewed by Jeffrey Overstreet

Discogs Apple Music TIDAL Amazon Music Spotify YouTube Music

Label Interscope RecordsThe Phantom Tollbooth2000

alternative rock pop rock post-punk rock

U2 Rediscover Their Strengths, Renew Timeless Psalms

U2 have become the torch-bearers for David the Psalmist. They careen from faith to doubt to faith again, sometimes all in the same song. No matter how strong their belief, "peace on earth" still eludes them. In 1986, Bono crooned their banner cry: "I still haven't found what I'm looking for."

Their journey stretches back more than twenty years now, and they don't show signs of stopping. At first they wore their hearts on their sleeves. Then they put on masks and told us, with a wink, that they could sell us something "even better than the real thing." Throughout varying manifestations, U2's themes, message, and questions have remained the same. Yes, God is there. Yes, Jesus was God's gift to us. Yes, we human beings have really messed up the world. But is God still listening? Will He keep his promises?

Those essential sentiments have not always been clear to everyone. During the 1990s, when they delved into devilish clowning, pointing to the truth by laughing at the lies, much of their audience did not get the joke. Many preferred U2's straightforward messages and organic rock and roll. Some were more deeply concerned, claiming U2 abandoned their faith and their convictions. But the boys from Ireland pressed on, experimenting, absorbing the newest technologies and trends, increasing the spectrum of their sound.

Have U2 lost sight of their strengths? Can they exist anymore without the special effects? Now, at the turn of the millennium, a new album arrives... All That You Can't Leave Behind. And it effectively answers those questions.

Getting Back to Basics

As the title suggests, this collection is about what is essential, what is left when the trappings are stripped away. In other words, the last albums were about surface, but this one's about soul.

Bono and the boys have dropped the masks, dropped the irony, and now they're shooting straight from the hip. With enthusiasm and newfound confidence, they're storming back with eleven new songs that echo the sincerity and the soaring sounds of the 80's. But this isn't time travel. They're still dusting each confection with new sounds, new tricks. The balance is stronger, truer. The effects don't clutter and crowd the songs; they merely enhance them.

All That You Can't Leave Behind is striking some listeners as "U2-lite", almost easy-listening. That's because we're accustomed to the angry, militant U2 and the noisy, sarcastic U2. This is an older, wiser U2. The world is full of angry bands. Anger is easy. Sarcasm's a cinch. This time they abandoned bone-picking and discovered something very hard to find in modern rock...joy.

Bono told the press lately that U2 wanted to see if they could invent a "valid noise" at the turn of the century. Their conclusion? "Maybe not." Bono explains, "The only thing that would make a rock band valid right now would be if that rock band could write songs that would transcend the time they were made in." "Most of the album is like a soul record," says drummer Larry Mullen Jr. "We've never made anything remotely like it."

Soul-Searching Soul Music

Reunited with the producers that took them to the top, Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, U2 sound excited and rejuvenated. The songs are indeed rock solid. Each track seems poised to top the charts. Each chorus is instantly unforgettable. Once again, Larry's drums are central, so much more effective than drum machines. Adam's bass playing provides the firm foundation every time.

And The Edge's guitar supports these songs with creative mixes of chords and harmonics rather than stealing the show with fancy solos. His punchy buzz guitar on "Elevation" ensures that the song will send the concert crowds into a euphoric hooting frenzy. "Walk On" and "Kite" reflect the high arching tones of past anthems like "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?"

Instead of comparing these tracks to those by Smashing Pumpkins or Nine Inch Nails, you're more likely to think of Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready" or something off of the Beatles' "Rubber Soul". Listen to the musicians' chemistry on the raw and remarkable "In A Little While," perhaps the simplest little number they've ever cooked up. And sometimes the music just gallops along with contagious glee, as on the blissful "Wild Honey." Have these guys ever had so much fun? They're exhilarated by the very act of being themselves. All That You Can't Leave Behind might as well have been called... well... U2.

Bono makes wise decisions here. The years of touring have taken their toll on his voice, but he makes up for lack of power and volume with expressiveness and grit. His melodies and voice are resonant with soul, ebullience, and freedom that speak of contentment. Listen to him effortlessly leap from a hush to a roar in "Walk On".

His lyrics aren't as ponderous and poetic as they were in "With or Without You." But they're not as frivolous and freestyle as they were in "Some Days Are Better Than Others" (a song that proved its own point.) It's as though someone asked him to look back over his career of songwriting and distill the things most important to him into one song cycle, a sort of "Bono's manifesto."

Yeah, he still insists on rather ridiculous rhymes, as in "Peace on Earth":

Where I grew up/there weren't many trees/where there were we chopped them down/and used them on our enemies.

But he's done some of his best writing here as well. In the same song, he cries:

Jesus, this song you wrote/The words are sticking in my throat/'Peace on earth'/I hear it every Christmastime/but hope and history won't rhyme/So what's it worth?

After scolding God for negligence in "Peace on Earth", Bono ends up turning the accusations upon himself, to question his own wisdom and perspective, just like King David does in his own laments. In "When I Look at the World", he prays for a Christ-like perspective. "Tell me, tell me, what do you see?/Tell me tell me, what is wrong with me?"

While such meditations ended Pop on a note of despair ("Wake Up Dead Man"), this album closes with an answer. In "Grace", Bono composes a lovely picture of a girl who "carries a pearl in perfect condition", a mysterious figure who, if you will, moves in mysterious ways. He admits his own metaphor, "It's a name for a girl/ but it's also a thought that can change the world." Grace, he asserts, really is our hope, because "she travels outside of karma." (Hear that, John Lennon?) Rather than despair in fear of judgment, Bono turns to the mystery of God's grace, which breaks the rules and comes to us undeserved.

Rediscovering U2-Classic

While this confident and upbeat record is indeed another masterstroke for U2, I would not go so far as to say it is their finest. Personally, I found the 1990s albums, which I call "the Underworld Trilogy", to be rich, satisfying concept albums, whose interwoven themes and riddles offer profound insight on how the world is trying to heal its own spiritual wounds. And I doubt that Bono will ever write more poetically or sing more beautifully than he did on The Joshua Tree.

But I'm not going to complain. All That You Can't Leave Behind shows that U2 hasn't had an identity crisis. They've merely added new tools to their toolbox. Even The Beatles knew, after revolutionizing the sound of rock with Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's, that they needed to stay strong in the fundamentals, and by going back to the basics they produced some of their finest work.

U2 still haven't found what they're looking for. But they have come to a fuller understanding of who they are, and what the journey has made them. "You've been all over/and it's been all over you..." sings Bono the Wanderer, probably talking to himself. And yet he concludes, in spite of all the darkness he's seen, that it's a "beautiful day." "The heart is a bloom/that shoots up through stony ground," he sings during the album's first glistening notes. Against all odds, hope springs eternal, and grace rains down.

5 tocks