February 21, 2009

No light on the horizon for U2

Nick Kelly, Irish Independent

I'm having a hard time reconciling the glut of four-star reviews I've been reading for U2's new album with the record that I heard last week.

To these ears, it sounds frustratingly disjointed and jumbled; a set of songs that don't really belong together, that rub each other up the wrong way.

This lack of continuity is only to be expected, when you consider that it was recorded in four different countries in three different continents.

And this doesn't include the original sessions with uber-producer Rick Rubin, which were jettisoned in 2006. It appears to have been a case of rip it up and start again.

Much has been made of the attempt to rediscover their mojo in Morocco. The Mighty Boosh are thanked in the sleeve notes, and Bono has mentioned his love of that classic episode where Howard Moon ventures deep into the desert to find every musicians' holy grail: a new sound...only to find Chris de Burgh!

By fetching up in Fez, the band obviously hoped the exoticism of the ancient walled city would give them a shot in the arm.

But with the exception of "Fez -- Being Born" (which is less a song than a Zooropa-type sonic experiment bearing Brian Eno's fingerprints) there are few musical souvenirs of their North African adventure to be found here. Anyone expecting Horizon to be U2's answer to Paul Simon's Graceland (in which the music and culture of South Africa are imbedded in its very DNA) will be disappointed. They haven't altered the template that radically.

But that's more an observation than a criticism. One problem I do have with No Line on the Horizon is the lack of killer singles -- you will search hard for any anthem with the immediacy and joyful abandon of, say, "Beautiful Day" or "City Of Blinding Lights."

And yet the album starts so promisingly. The title track has a pleasingly grimey one-chord riff that is more Arcade Fire than "Unforgettable Fire." And Bono sounds free and easy.

Then comes "Magnificent," apparently modelled on a Bach melody, with Bono rolling back the years with a cloud-bursting falsetto that evokes the late Billy MacKenzie of The Associates. And Adam and Larry really hit a groove here.

Next up is "Moment of Surrender," which for me is by some distance the best song on the album. A seven-minute gospel-tinged epic in which it all comes together: the terrific rhythm section, Edge's soulful slide guitar, the church-like organ, Bono's curious vocals about a drug addict's spiritual epiphany on the New York subway, and Eno and Daniel Lanois' mercurial production...It's one of U2's best songs.

But the band struggle to reach these heights thereafter. "Unknown Caller" is musically fine: Edge delivers an epic Neil Young-style guitar solo, and its expansive, stadium-sized sound will go down great in Croker come July -- but the lyrics really let it down.

"Get On Your Boots" is less a song than a disembodied riff on a Red Bull binge, with a lyric that goes: "I don't want to talk about wars between nations." That makes a change! "Stand Up Comedy" has Bono slipping back into first-person mode, singing about his own ego....

"White As Snow" is a forgettable slice of cod-country that was reportedly written especially for Jim Sheridan's forthcoming movie Brothers.

The closing "Cedars of Lebanon" sees Bono again in third-person mode, this time as a journalist in the Middle East who's happy to talk about the wars between nations. It's another case of Bono's clunky words getting in the way of a perfectly good tune.

I don't share the view that Horizon is a courageous leap forward for U2. I think it has a
couple of good songs, one great one, and a lot of filler. It's very well produced -- as you'd expect with Lanois, Eno and Lillywhite on board -- but Horizon sounds like it was a real struggle to make.

When I think of classic albums such as The Strokes' debut or the Pixies' Surfer Rosa, one gets the sense that the music just bled from them. The songs just flow into each other. Never mind years, they sound like they took mere hours to record. The stop/start Horizon, though, is the sound of a band trying too hard to recapture the magic.

© 2009 Independent.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:23 AM | Comments (0)

February 20, 2009

U2: No Line on the Horizon

Review: 5 stars (out of 5)

David Fricke, Rolling Stone

"I was born to sing for you/I didn't have a choice but to lift you up," Bono declares early on this album, in a song called "Magnificent." He does it in an oddly low register, a heated hush just above the shimmer of the Edge's guitar and the iron-horse roll of bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. Bono is soon up in thin air with those familiar rodeo yells, on his way to the chorus, which ends with him just singing the word "magnificent," repeating it with relish, stretching the syllables.

But he does it not in self-congratulation, more like wonder and respect, as if in middle age, on his band's 11th studio album, he still can't believe his gift — and luck. Bono knows he was born with a good weapon for making the right kind of trouble: the clean gleam and rocket's arc of that voice. "It was one dull morning/I woke the world with bawling," he boasted in "Out of Control," written by Bono on his 18th birthday and issued on U2's Irish debut EP.

He is still singing about singing, all over No Line on the Horizon, U2's first album in nearly five years and their best, in its textural exploration and tenacious melodic grip, since 1991's Achtung Baby. "Shout for joy if you get the chance," Bono commands, in a text- message cadence and drill sergeant's bark, in "Unknown Caller." He leads by example in the ham-with-wry pop of "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" — "Listen for me/I'll be shouting/Shouting to the darkness" — then demands his piece of the din in the glam-fuzz shindig "Get on Your Boots": "Let me in the sound!...Meet me in the sound!" God, guilt, love, sin, terrorism and transcendence — Bono juggles them all here, with the usual cracks at his own hubris. ("Stand up to rock stars," he warns in "Stand Up Comedy." "Be careful of small men with big ideas.")

Bono also keeps coming back to the sheer power and pleasure of a long high note and the salvation you can feel in being heard. "I'm running down the road like loose electricity," he jabbers, with some of that nasal acid of the '66 Bob Dylan, through the hard-rock clatter of "Breathe," "while the band in my head plays a striptease."

It is a strange thing to sing on a record that more often reveals itself in tempered gestures, at a measured pace. (The main exception, the outright frivolity of "Get on Your Boots," comes right in the middle, as if the band thought it needed some kind of zany halftime.) Most of the great — and biggest-selling — U2 albums have been confrontational successes: the dramatic entrance on 1980's Boy; the spiritual-pilgrim reach of 1987's The Joshua Tree; the electro-Weimar whirl of Achtung Baby; the return to basics on 2004's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Produced by the now-standard trio of Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite, No Line on the Horizon is closer to the transitional risks — the Irish-gothic spell of 1984's The Unforgettable Fire, the techno-rock jet lag of 1993's Zooropa — but with a consistent persuasion in the guitar hooks, rhythms and vocal
lines.

In "No Line on the Horizon," it is the combination of garage-organ drone, fat guitar distortion and Mullen's parade-ground drumming, the last so sharp and hard all the way through that it's difficult to tell how much is him and how much is looping (that is a compliment). The Edge takes one of his few extended guitar solos at the end of "Unknown Caller," a straightforward, elegiac break with a worn, notched edge to his treble tone. "White as Snow" is mostly alpine quiet — guitar, keyboard, Bono and harmonies, like the Doors' "The Crystal Ship" crossed with an Appalachian ballad. "Cedars of Lebanon" ends the album much as "The Wanderer" did on Zooropa, a triumph of bare minimums (this time it's Bono going in circles, through wreckage, instead of Johnny Cash, who sang "The Wanderer") with limpid guitar and electronics suggesting a Jimi Hendrix love song, had he lived into the digital age.

"Fez — Being Born" is the least linear song on this album (no small achievement), a highway ride in flashback images dotted with Bono's wordless yelps and the descending ring of the Edge's guitar. The last lines actually tell you plenty about U2's songwriting priorities: "Head first, then foot/Then heart sets sail." The big irony: Their singer is one of the most insecure frontmen in the business. Bono knows exactly what a lot of you think of his social activism and flamboyant freelance diplomacy. But the flip side of that bravado, in "I'll Go Crazy..." — "The right to appear ridiculous is something I hold dear" — is a running doubt in Bono's lyrics, that he always goes too far ("Stand Up Comedy") and will never be as good as his ideals. The rising-falling effect of the harmony voices around Bono in the long space-walk "Moment of Surrender" is a perfect picture of where he really wants to be, when he gets to the line about "vision over visibility."

And he's sure he'll never get there on his own. "We are people borne of sound/The songs are in our eyes/Gonna wear them like a crown," Bono crows, next to the Edge's fevered-staccato guitar, near the end of "Breathe" — a grateful description of what it's like to be in a great rock & roll band, specifically this one. Bono knows he was born with a voice. He also knows that without Mullen, Clayton and the Edge, he'd be just another big mouth.

© 2009 Rolling Stone.

Posted by Jonathan at 03:25 AM | Comments (0)

February 16, 2009

U2: No Line on the Horizon

Pete Paphides, The Times

3/5 stars

Talk about raising the stakes. "If this isn't our best album, we're irrelevant," Bono declared when asked about U2's new album, No Line on the Horizon, released on March 2. Anyone who has heard the current single, Get on Your Boots, surely won't need reminding how quickly such statements can repeat on you. Quite how such a dog's dinner of Dylan-esque free association and Bolan-esque electric boogie made it beyond the rehearsal room is anyone's guess.

But even before that point the drip-feed of information around No Line on the Horizon had been worrying. Sessions with Rick Rubin were abandoned early. The group made better progress with Brian Eno and Danny Lanois, the producers of U2's 1987 album The Joshua Tree, which prompted Universal to set a deadline for release for autumn 2008. And yet no amount of frantic finessing could ensure the album's arrival in shops by Christmas.

It's a relief, then, to report that on their 12th album U2 come out of the traps sounding like, well, their old selves. The title track captures a band powering along with the majestic velocity of a Sherman tank. You want it to last, and it does for a time. "I was born to sing for you," intones Bono on the stunning Magnificent, a lyric that brings religious intensity to what, by anyone else, would be a mere love song.

What follows is less a disaster and more a loss of focus, brought about, you suspect, because this is really a compilation of highlights from several disparately spread sessions. That they spent 16 months retooling Stand up Comedy should have told them that this lolloping mid-paced rocker simply wasn't good enough – and certainly not with lines such as "Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady". Trailed as the centrepiece of the album, Moment of Surrender is regarded by the band as the equal of One (1991). But Bono's impassioned testifying is left exposed by a meagre tune.

About three quarters in, however, it's a relief to report that you have heard all of the new album's low points. Adapted from a folk song, White as Snow is Bono's best vocal, depicting a war-torn landscape through eyes exiled by it.

No less potently, Cedars of Lebanon takes shape amid a sonic fug that mirrors the exhaustion of its war reporter narrator: "Child drinking dirty water from the riverbank/ Soldier brings oranges he got out from a tank."

No Line on the Horizon isn't U2's best album. But irrelevant? When four members of a group click and the tape is running, irrelevant doesn't really come into it. And, over 54 minutes, there are enough of those moments to remind you that you write off U2 at your peril. Next time, though, Bono might want to use his powers of diplomacy to the benefit of his band. If you can get George Bush to sanction the largest response by a Western government to the Aids crisis then can't you convince your label to wait until you have really delivered your best album?

© 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:19 PM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2009

U2: the verdict on 'No Line on the Horizon'

By John Meagher, Irish Independent

They took their time, didn't they? It's been four years and three months since the last U2 studio album -- the longest gap in the band's history. At times, this -- their 12th -- could have been called No Finish on the Horizon, such were the apparent difficulties and insecurities they faced when making it.

Initially, Rick Rubin, the American producer who helped rejuvenate the careers of Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond, was seen as the one that could move the band into exciting new areas. But those sessions, from July 2006, didn't work out and they turned once more to trusted old friends, Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite. The latter has worked on and off with the band since their debut album, Boy, the former pair from 1984's The Unforgettable Fire.

Recording took place in Morocco, New York, London and their Hanover Quay studio in Dublin with up to 50 new songs recorded. They were still tinkering with songs, titles and sequences right up to Christmas, further fuelling online speculation that they were suffering creative paralysis and not confident enough to let go.

And creative difficulties seemed all too apparent on early acquaintance with lead single, "Get On Your Boots." "Is this it?" you could almost hear the punters say when the song was debuted on 2FM last month. Its insistent, fuzzy guitars were fine, although the nonsense lyrics were harder to stomach, but just where was the bold new direction the band and assorted friends had been promising us?

A bold change in direction will not be found on the album either. It won't wrong-foot the listener in the way that Achtung Baby or even Pop did. But suggestions that U2 had lost their mojo are just as unfounded -- and unfair. No Line on the Horizon may not be a masterpiece, but it is unquestionably a very good, consistently strong collection that's every bit the match of their two huge selling albums of this decade, All That You Can't Leave Behind and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. Even "Get On Your Boots" proves to be a grower, working well when heard within the context of the album.

Just shy of 54 minutes long, it's one of their lengthier efforts. And of the 11 tracks, only two could be described as duds (more of which anon). That's not a bad strike rate by anybody's standards.

It starts off strongly with the title track, a barnstorming stadium rock tune that could have come from the songwriting stable of Kings of Leon. The young Southerners have supported U2 on the road, and that clearly has had an impact on Bono who sounds uncannily like that band's Caleb Followill in places. Imitation, flattery and all that...

It's followed by one of the album's stand-outs, the aptly titled "Magnificent." This already sounds like a classic U2 song that combines disparate eras of their career in a hugely appealing way -- War-meets-Zooropa, if you will. Even the most avowed U2-hater is likely to struggle to come up with reasons to dislike the Edge's irresistible guitars and muscular rhythm section. It's one of two songs featuring the keyboards of will.i.am and while the Black Eyed Peas' main man is hardly a distinct enough keys player to make you sit up and take notice, Eno's typically smart production takes all the elements and concocts the sort of epic five-minuter that's become his stock-in-trade. Let's just say one of his more recent "clients," Coldplay's Chris Martin, is likely to weep with envy when he hears it.

No Line on the Horizon is, for the most part, an upbeat album. There are several euphoric moments and lots of allusions to redemption. Songs like "Moment of Salvation" -- which, at more than seven minutes long, definitely outstays its welcome -- is loaded with lyrics referencing "soul," "God" and "fire." The atmospheric "Unknown Caller" is cut from the same cloth. Let's face it, it would hardly be a U2 album if Bono wasn't engaged by such themes -- and if you're one of the many who finds this sort of stuff off-putting, much of the album simply won't work for you.

There are plenty of songs that won't have such a divisive effect, however. "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight," for instance, is a massively uplifting number that's bound to be a live favourite when U2 take the show on the road this summer. There's humour too, as Bono, tongue firmly in cheek, notes: "The right to appear ridiculous is something I hold dear." Never a truer word spoken, Bono.

It's not the only self-deprecating moment on the album. "Stand Up Comedy" finds the frontman, who is given to wearing shoes with elevated soles, singing of "Napolean in high heels" before offering the killer line: "Be careful of small men with big ideas." The Edge's guitar playing is raw and dirty -- it's got Queens of the Stone Age written all over it. But the song fails to captivate. It just seems a little too contrived.

The album's most intriguing song is "FEZ -- Coming Home," which is a triumph of Eno's yen for experimentalism over U2's big sound. (In fact, Eno and Lanois share songwriting credits on several tracks.) It was one of the first songs recorded -- during sessions in the Moroccan city that gives the song its title -- and it's a hint about what this album could have sounded like if the band really had thrown caution to the wind. Its electro-ambient intro features the sound of birds singing and the bustle of Moroccan life (it was apparently recorded in the outdoor courtyard of an ancient riad) and Bono referencing the "let me in the sound" line from "Get On Your Boots," before it dissolves into a scattergun rock that shifts and slides into unexpected territory. The tempo changes are surprising and the song boasts a daring that the bulk of the other tracks, for all their merits, simply lack.

As mentioned at the outset, a pair of songs fall some way short of the mark. One of them is "Stand Up Comedy." The other is "Breathe," which finds Bono in semi spoken-word mode, although the song doesn't do enough to draw the listener in.

The plaintive "White As Snow" has no such problem. One of the slower tracks on the album, its intro recalls Sigur Ros while, later, a French horn highlights the evocative lyrics.

Closer "Cedars of Lebanon" is the most overtly political song, and a real grower. Like many of its siblings on this album, its moody atmospheric texture recalls Achtung Baby-era U2. It's a downbeat song on which to conclude an album brimming with life and hope.

No Line on the Horizon is unlikely to disappoint the band's multitudinous fanbase. They haven't reinvented themselves as they have suggested, but instead play to their strengths. Fledgling bands with stadium rock ambitions could certainly learn a thing or two from this album.

After such a long and difficult gestation, the album feels like a triumph. It won't change the world, but it does give Bono, The Edge, Adam and Larry a ticket for world domination once more. Just watch those sales figures roll in.

No Line on the Horizon is released on February 27. Lead single "Get On Your Boots" is released in physical format today.

© 2009 Irish Independent.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:45 PM | Comments (0)

February 02, 2009

U2 Exclusive Lowdown On New Album

Still At The Top: The Edge, Adam, Bono And Larry

Billy Sloan, Sunday Mail

U2 finally unveiled their new album No Line On The Horizon behind closed doors and under the strictest security.

But first again with the big music exclusives... Email were there to hear it.

We were invited by Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr to get a sneak preview of their eagerly awaited 12th studio album - not released until March 2.

And it's a cracker, up there with U2 classics such as Achtung Baby, The Joshua Tree and All That You Can't Leave Behind.

The Irish supergroup took the wraps off No Line On The Horizon in the chic Saatchi art gallery at the famous Chelsea Barracks in London.

It features hot new single Get On Your Boots, which is being played to death by radio stations across the UK.

Before hearing the killer tracks, the select guests had to give up all belongings - including mobile phones and any recording devices. They were only returned when the playthrough was over.

But it was worth it to get the first listen to amazing songs such as Magnificent, Moment Of Surrender and Cedars Of Lebanon.

On first hearing, it sounds like U2's most complete album - to be listened to from first track to last. It's also full of brilliant lyrics and Bono's vocals have never sounded stronger.

Here is my pick of the key cuts on No Line On The Horizon.

NO LINE ON THE HORIZON

This opens with a loud sonic drone before Bono sings: "I knew a girl who's like the sea/I watch her changing every day for me."

Then Larry's drums kick in and the song lifts off. It could be their best live stadium opener since Zoo Station.

MAGNIFICENT

A future single choice which more than lives up to its bold title. The Edge's driving guitar gives the song a New Year's Day-style mood.

Bono is in great form when he sings: "I was born to sing for you/I didn't have a choice but to lift you up."

He's dead right because, just two numbers in, the album already has a classic feel.

MOMENT OF SURRENDER

Bono reckons this is one of the best songs U2 have written - and with their back catalogue, that's saying something.

It opens with a guitar sound reminiscent of Where The Streets Have No Name and features a great Edge solo.

In one of his most personal lyrics, Bono says: "I've been in every black hole/At the altar of the dark star/My body's now a begging bowl/That's begging to get back."

Astunning song Springsteen or Dylan would be proud of.

UNKNOWN CALLER

An epic with double-tracked vocals, wailing Edge guitar and pounding Adam bass.

It's a musical feast with so much going on it's initially tough to take it all in. In the chant-style chorus Bono sings: "Hear me/Cease to speak/That I may speak/Shush now."

If nothing else, that's got to be another first for U2 - a pop song with "Shush" in the lyric.

I'LL GO CRAZY IF I DON'T GO CRAZY TONIGHT

Thumping drums, pulsing bass and piano get this potential single off the launch pad.

Musically, it has all the trademarks of a U2 classic with another soaring Bono vocal and great "woo-oo" hook on the chorus.

STAND UP COMEDY

This proves the group are huge Led Zeppelin fans because Edge's guitar riff has a real Jimmy Page feel.

In terms of being musically adventurous, it's not for the faint-hearted and definitely up there with Exit from The Joshua Tree in 1987.

CEDARS OF LEBANON

Bono almost speaks his vocal over a more hymnal, hypnotic backing which leads to a beautiful, almost choral, hook.

Some atmospheric Edge guitar creeps in and builds the mood. This song is so good you don't want it to end.

A fitting finale to a classic U2 album.

© 2009 Sunday Mail.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:28 AM | Comments (0)

August 06, 2008

Bono remembers U2's "Boy"

Rolling Stone,

This could be the greatest comment on RollingStone.com ever: U2's Bono was reading David Fricke's review of the new reissue of Boy, and was moved to respond. Unfortunately, he maxed out our word limit in the comments section, so we're just going to post his text in full here. We're not going to attempt to boil it down, except to say that he does mention that the band is presently attempting to finish their most "complete and radical album yet." Without further ado:

Bono

Entering the blogosphere, a review of BOY from the singer who was one at the time of recording... We the members of said post punk combo are very complimented by DAVID FRICKES 4.5 star review of our debut, an album we always believed in. I remember now a generous JON PARELES review from the VILLAGE VOICE in 1980, a line something along the lines of "this is peter pan, I hope they break up before they grow up." Anyway, as my band mates and I attempt to finish our most complete and radical album yet, here's my why and what i think is right and wrong about BOY having listened to it for the first time in over twenty years if you start from the pseudo british accent and the little reported fact that the singer sounds like a girl, things don't look too promising ...the annoying gene is present in self consciousness and self immolation... you do want to give the singer a slap for lots of reasons but let's start with the pretentiousness....the singer has obviously been listening to SIOUXIE AND THE BANSHEES, JOY DIVISION and a few others whose combined archness and artfulness was just too much for the freckled face teenager from northside of DUBLIN.... neither fully protestant or catholic, IRELAND had left the boy with a face like a baked bean and in search of a nonregional identity...a theme that continues to the present.

As for the non lyrics that Wunderkind STEVE LILYWHITE had begged him to no avail to write... well....the excuse is that in the manner of another POP idol, IGGY, they were for the most written live on the microphone ...this was noble in its search for authenticity but a very flawed idea that almost gauges the eyes out of the albums open face but alas, the strengths way out weigh the weaknesses...maybe because it was an album about vulnerability... BOY eschews the usual subject matter of rock and roll's hurry to deface its own innocence through knowingness, sex, drugs etc in favour of a refusal to grow up ...think GUNTER GRASS's Tin Drum VOLKER SCHLONDORF's film of the novel released the same year as BOY...

if ninetynine percent of rock and roll is about sex this one percenter is about virginity and not wanting to lose it...maleneÿss is more elusive here and I can see now why the album had such a connection in the gay community with songs like TWILIGHT and STORIES FOR BOYS.

Then there is the galling religious audacity of writing a song about agape love at eighteen years old....that alone deserves some gold stars as well as the custard pies... I WILL FOLLOW is still a rush and a marker for innovation (the percussion in the drop was a bicycle spinning, wheels upside down and played like a harp with a kitchen fork...)

ADAM CLAYTONs bass is a revelation to me on this listen, and up there with JOHN ENTWISLE and PETER HOOK in its inventiveness... LARRY MULLEN too is jumping through hoops to create a circus of tom tom parts and spectral spectre like snaring.... giddying up and clearing the fence every time.... I agree with DAVID FRICKE that they are not yet a rhythm section in the traditional sense but maybe something more interesting ... the 'weight' of U2....Steve LILYWHITES production deserves a lot of credit here for its sonic prowess, big music in little hands...

But the star of the show is THE EDGE some guitar credit must be shared with the groups that helped shape us, people like PINK FLOYD, PIL and TELEVISION... guitar players like STUART ADAMSON VINNIE REILLY etc but there is something happening here that is truly special...EDGEs genuine genius developing on the blank and bleached photographic paper.... avoiding all the obvious blues scales that blind every other guitar player that ever heard LED ZEPPELIN ...THE EDGE finds some new colours for the spectrum of rock. Colours he now owns ... owning a colour, wow ... imagine owning the colour yellow like VAN GOGH... EDGE owns, well im not exactly sure what colours they are... indigo or violet or crimson?... but you sense an emotional colour temperature that is unique to him... its his palette we're painting from. he's following the jazzmen's maxim to "own your own tone and you will become contagious" and as a result you can hear him show up in lots of rooms hes not in, isn't that right…?

Surely this is the most influential guitarist since the great composers JIMMY PAGE, PETE TOWNSEND, NEIL YOUNG but remember he doesn't have the history of the blues to plumb, these are unchartered waters...was to the English psychedelic revival we were also inspired by and plundering ... THE TEARDROP EXPLODES and ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN...they were better than us no doubt about it...with ECHOs CROCODILES a better debut on pretty much every level... that and their next album HEAVEN UP HERE having the same effect on their moment as RADIOHEADS BENDS AND OK COMPUTER. It was all there... songwriting, playing and standing in front of the mirror type coolness but of course the pursuit of coolness is rarely the same thing as the pursuit of art. This was obvious to a lot of our contempories too BUT maybe not enough...im not not talking about Teardrops or the Bunnyrabbits or Wah Heat! but for many of our peers, the most important bit was lifestyle and the fashion piece which we clearly were not very good at. And it is very very important...An almost essential companion to greatness... From ELVIS to THE BEATLES THE WHO to THE STONES THE CLASH to PRINCE, STYLE has been part of rocks revolution and evolution.... our only addition is comedic failure to fit into the grey or vivid clothes of rebellion and the crime of thinking no veneer was the utterly radical way to look and sound...and then there's the other thing, the lifestyle....of course the life of the artist is always more compelling than being an artist. To live in the garret with a knife in your hand and a bleeding ear is more romantic than the fragility that leaves open the wound ... Bohemia is more attractive than suburbia but maybe you don't live there, maybe you live on a street which is like any other street where the opera that goes on behind parted curtains is more than enough.... It was briefly for U2.

you can have everything the songs, the production, the face, the attitude but still not have "IT"... U2 had nothing really, nothing but "IT"... For us music was a sacrament ...an even more demanding and sometimes more demeaning thing than music as ART, we wanted to make a music to take you in and out of your body, out of your comfort zone, out of your self, as well as your bedroom, a music that finds you looking under your bed for God to protect your innocence...

...i'm proud of this little Polaroid of a life I cant fully recall. As well as the ability to make embarrassing mistakes, the demands of a great debut might be fresh ideas, fresh paint and sometimes for its canvas, a fresh face.

I miss my boyhood.

Bono, 3rd August

Copyright © 2008 Rolling Stone.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:22 AM | Comments (0)

March 27, 2008

U2 3D - Exclusive Review!

U23D is a revolutionary step in the art of the concert video. The concept alone is nothing short of genius - the viewer takes a seat in the cinema, puts on some 3D glasses and is suddenly transported to the front row of an arena concert of the biggest band in the world.

As the film begins and the volume of the crowd gradually increases, the excitement slowly builds. Suddenly the band takes the stage and bursts into Vertigo, the atmosphere is electric - the camera first pans the crowd jumping and singing along religiously, before suddenly zooming to within a foot of The Edge's guitar - its hard to restrain from reaching out and "touching him" as he strums the chords.

And so the film continues - the camera follows Bono as he struts the stage with his usual swagger, sometimes filming him from the point of view of a fan crushed up against the barrier, other times from the eyes of his fellow band members. There are also cameras lodged above Larry Mullen's drum kit, at the feet of Adam Clayton, at the back of the stadium or buried deep in the centre of the mosh pit, allowing the audience to view the show from every possible perspective.

The word that keeps springing to mind throughout is immersion; many times during the film I literally forgot I was watching a recorded program and had to control myself from applauding and singing along!

Although U23D was shot in Argentina on the bands 'Vertigo' tour, (promoting their 2005 album 'How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb'), there are no barriers between the audience of the film and the audience of the actual show - it doesn't feel like it's in Argentina, it could be anywhere in the world. The set list spans the band's entire career meaning the film cannot date. Early hits such as 'New Years Day' and 'Pride' sound as fresh as ever, while moving renditions of 'Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own' and 'Miss Sarajevo' have the viewer nothing short of enthralled.

Perhaps the reason the film was titled U23D as opposed to 'Live In Argentina' highlights the band wanting this to be more than just a live concert film, but a total live experience - a true representation of what a U2 gig is really like.

The band close with 'With Or Without You', the credits roll (in 3D of course), before the band re-appears once more for an acoustic version of 'Yahweh'. And with that, U23D comes to a finish.

I leave the cinema and walk back on to the street, still buzzing from the show - the same feeling one gets at the conclusion of a real concert, the only difference is the walk home is a lot less crowded.

U2:3D opens nationally on April 10 - click below for an insight into the making of the film!

Copyright © 2007 mcm entertainment.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:37 PM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2008

U2 3D (IMAX)

Review by Brian Orndorf

While the subject of countless concert videos and films over their 30-year history, U2's most iconic performances can be boiled down to three endeavors. 1983's "Under a Blood Red Sky" showcased U2's hunger, their youthful idealism, and a raw sound just finding its balance. 1988's "Rattle and Hum" captured the band getting used to their newfound world dominance, while also presenting an unstoppable live act gearing up for the best years of their lives. And now "U2 3D" has been added to the list.

Comfortable in their rock overlord boots, U2 puts on a mighty display of confidence in this swirly concert film. Shot in 2006 on various stops of the worldwide "Vertigo Tour," "3D" is an experience that will overwhelm the faithful and enchant the newcomers. It's U2 larger than life; a perspective they've been after for years and now can achieve through this mighty IMAX presentation and set list of hits galore. There's a surefire magic in watching Bono, The Edge, Larry Mullen Jr., and Adam Clayton perform that "3D" appreciates; it slaps the audience in the front row for a well-rehearsed corker of a show that hits all the U2 basics while providing unsettling intimacy far beyond the limitation of previous cinematic concert efforts.

Directed by Mark Pellington and Catherine Owens, "3D" might surprise some the way it refrains from making a monster visual splash. The cameras seem almost reluctant to put on a true three-dimensional show, patiently covering the band as they maneuver around the massive stage and boogie down the runways that penetrate the enthusiastic crowd. It's a slight twitch of disappointment that is quickly erased by the enormity of this picture, which is smart enough to occasionally just sit there and passively take in the endless sea of people: the throng of fans packed like sardines singing along with their whole body to the hits. "3D" plays these moments like Christmas morning, and when they arrive, the visuals immediately result in goosebumps and the unavoidable dropping of the jaw.

The 3D is used effectively throughout the film, but one moment stands out as downright spooky. During a robust performance of "Sunday Bloody Sunday," the camera comes in tight to Bono, who brings the frame in and cradles it as he would an old friend, singing only to us, while Edge works the backing vocals in the surround channels. It's one of those magical cinema moments you just can't get at home.

As expected, Bono and the boys milk the new depth of field with their theatrics, turning in Broadway-quality performances as they articulate every last beat from the heart. Those prone to motion sickness when it comes to Bono's over-the-top prancing and displays of performance art should be advised the man is now armed with 3D, and he's not afraid to use it.

Also front and center are the band's political pleas and general optimism for the unification of humanity. It just wouldn't be a U2 concert without indefatigable hope for the future. I'm thrilled it remains in the film.

With a set list that includes "One," "Vertigo," "Beautiful Day," "Pride (In the Name of Love)," and a stirring stand-up-and-cheer rendition of "Where the Streets Have No Name," (14 songs in total appear in the picture), "U2 3D" is able to soar on the pure exhilaration of a band blitzing through their catalog and having a grand old time. The 3D only adds to the experience, allowing the performance to surround the audience and nestle them gently in the middle of a band finally meeting a screen size that matches their mammoth legacy and substantial skill.

Copyright © 2008 DVD Talk.com All Rights Reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:24 PM | Comments (0)

October 25, 2005

I Get The Picture

View over 40 exclusive pictures from the show

By Jonathan Wayne -- U2Station.com

One minute past nine o'clock, I fumble for my digital camera and frantically look around me in a momentary state of vertigo. I gaze 10 o'clock and see the extraterrestrial, Edge, hovering around on the left corner of the stage, picking the beginning of that fantastic opening song called City of Blinding Lights, but I don't see Bono. The next moment, red light comes streaming down from the roof and all of these other directions, like from a UFO, crisscrossing right into my face. I'm standing in the photo pit at a U2 Vertigo concert in Pittsburgh, PA, on a chilly and rainy October evening, awaiting for the show to start. Suddenly, I see a short figure dressed in black standing literally right in front of me (or maybe its 30 seconds later), and there I am trying to keep my digital camera from not magnetically wobbling in my hands. Streams of confetti are floating down from the dome-shaped roof onto my face and Bono has his head turned skyward, 47 inches from where I am standing. I look around me trying to get my bearings, hesitant in taking the first of hundreds of pictures. A couple of photojournalists scurry past me and I try to keep my sign in one place. I am the only person with a photo pass who actually has a ticket to the concert this evening. I even bring a slightly vain sign I've made that I am hoping to hold up in my brief stay in the photo pit next to the stage, but my first instinct is to snap that picture. SNAP.

Those first few moments when Bono magically materializes on the walkway like some alien and stands like a statue right in front of me is a moment suspended in time. FREEZE.

It was freezing though. The rain and wind lashed out all morning, afternoon and evening. Of course, how would I know? I was only waiting in the General Admission line for 3 hours. I met a diehard fan from Philadelphia who was waiting since 2:30am, camped out on the sidewalk. Sixteen hours before the concert, he sent me a text message saying he was the 16th in line and it was pouring rain. About 15 minutes later, I headed to bed. The young man paid triple the face value of a GA (General Admission) concert ticket and bought bus fare on Greyhound to come to the show from Philadelphia. He was just one of many dedicated U2 fans who travelled from other cities to see the band play another show. Some people who had tickets to the show viewed it as just another rock concert, some people waited a few months or years for the show, and some waited their whole lives to see U2 in person. One of those latter fans who never saw U2 managed to log onto Ebay and bought a pair of tickets (the seats were literally right along the roof high above, on the opposite side of the stage). He brought along a friend who wasn't really a U2 fan. His dream was to hear Where the Streets Have No Name live. About 20 minutes before U2 took the stage, I called him up on my cellphone to tell him I obtained a photo pass and got into the "bomb shelter". I waved my orange sign (rolled up) to see if he could spot me, and he did. A few minutes earlier, as I entered the photo pit with half a dozen other photographers, the diehard fan from Philly called out my name from the outside edge of the ellipse (or the bomb shelter). He wasn't one of those lucky fans who were randomly selected to enter the ellipse, but he probably had the best view on the floor, as he stood in the very first row. I flashed my sign and smiled and pointed to that photo pass sticker I stuck on my tshirt (we had talked for a good half-hour earlier that afternoon whilst waiting in line about hoping to obtain that pass). So he got what he wanted, a great spot on the floor, the guy up on the roof got what he wanted, his first U2 concert, and I got what I wanted, that elusive photo pass. Now we all just wanted the show to begin.

Two nights later, I'm still thinking about that blur of a concert. That opportunity to see the band up real close. The chance to make the most out of a 2 hour event. I've read a lot of reviews on this Vertigo tour from high profile critics from various newspapers and media sources, some praising Bono's humanitarian efforts, while others bashing his attempt to politicize an otherwise musical event. Tonight in Pittsburgh, U2 were not on autopilot though, coming off of some big shows in New York City, DC and Philly, playing with the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Mary J. Blige.

Recalling the last time U2 played in Pittsburgh (during the Elevation tour in 2001), from my observations, I'd like to say Bono and the band appeared relaxed on stage. That trend continued tonight. Bono invited a young man to play Party Girl on stage with the entire band and then celebrated the fact that it was a Saturday night, by popping open an expensive bottle of champagne. Bono and the Edge even signed autographs for a fan in the audience, proclaiming that "we haven't done this before". Four years ago, when I was at the concert, Bono took a bottle of bubbles from a female fan in the audience and blew some bubbles in the final song in their encore. Whether it was suds from champagne or bottled bubbles, U2 have had a history of being in party-mode in Pittsburgh.

Tearing through a searing version of Sunday Bloody Sunday, Bono brought two young boys on stage to help in singing "no more" (as related in that song, no more war, strife, hunger and bloodshed). A magical moment appeared when Bono asked everyone to display their cellphones to create a surreal type of milky way galaxy, all in support of the One campaign, where later on in the show, callers' names appeared on a giant screen.

The night didn't go flawlessly however, as Bono apparently had to repeat some lyrics in Stuck in a Moment (You Can't Get Out Of). In addition, at least compared to their Elevation show in Pittsburgh, Bono didn't display that youthful energy he's been known to have, specifically running around the catwalk, posing in front of screens (a la the Fly, which was missing from the setlist) and doing some more Achtung antics (Bono and Edge's bull and matador moments from the Elevation tour were a lone memory in the mind). However, after playing over 80 concerts on this tour and tirelessly touring the world, I don't blame Bono for being worn out. Only one song from their classic album, Achtung Baby, was performed, appropriately named One. Missing were many 90's songs, but then again, U2 have mixed up their setlists throughout the tour, incorporating such staples as Mysterious Ways, Until the End of the World, The Fly, Zoo Station and most recently, The First Time (played tonight) on the Vertigo tour.

Tonight, the one real highlight was Miss Sarajevo, a song originally performed in 1995 with Luciano Pavarotti for a special concert in Modena, Italy, to raise money for Bosnian children war victims (later that year, the band performed it live in a special War Child-supported concert in Sarajevo in front of 50,000 fans). Illuminated in blue light, Bono uplifted the Arena in his operatic voice. Though the song didn't carry as much emotional or meaningful weight in tonight's show, it was still a vastly underappreciated song in the rock n' roll canon. U2 both educated and enlightened the audience with this soaring tune, in which he asked "Is there a time for human rights? Is this the time?".

In Bullet the Blue Sky, Bono dropped to his knees with a blindfold and bandanna on (with Islamic, Jewish and Christian symbols), pleading for us all to co-exist, no matter which religion you were.

Perhaps there is nobody out there, not even Springsteen, who works this hard at a rock concert to promote social awareness, centering on African poverty and human rights. Four years ago, U2 played a controversial video on the NRA, Charlton Heston and gun control at their Elevation show, but this time around the band's political messages were more well-received (perhaps the difference being last time U2 were in Pittsburgh, 9/11 hadn't occurred yet and the United States weren't fighting insurgents in Iraq). Of course, there are those national critics out there who openly bash Bono for overextending his political campaign activism in a musical setting. In contrast, the cliche titles of "shaman" and "spokesman" have been used endless times in more positive U2 concert reviews. At least to me, personally, Bono is almost a separate entity from U2 itself. Yet, amazingly, when Bono and U2's ever-changing musical and lyrical themes all come together live, something otherworldly occurs. Audience members are pulled into the power that U2 generates, the Edge's futuristic sonic guitar booms reverberate through human flesh and as witnessed on October 22, 2005, an arena of thousands of people all pull out their cellphones, display it like single stars in space and transmit their names through the atmosphere to satellites high in celestial orbit. Then like magic, minutes later, their names come back to Earth and like one of many marquees in Times Square, come flashing across a single screen. Instances of names like these that come to mind from other events are notably the 2002 Superbowl Halftime Show with the names of the victims of 9/11 rolling like credits up a massive monolith of a screen. Tonight in Pittsburgh, however, these were not names of remembrance, but names all actively seeking to revitalize life itself, to help humanity, to change the world. Even if Bono ultimately cannot singlehandedly save the world from poverty and AIDS and even if his concerts and legions of diehard fans (who camp out all night to see the band) cannot save the world, concerts like the one witnessed in Pittsburgh (one that has no true meaning in the bigger scope of the world, one that is just "another show", or one that is the big event of the weekend in a small city), reaffirmed one's faith in the love of music, in the love of rock n' roll and in the name of love.

And so, right after I get out of my momentary freeze as I watch Bono tower over me from the photo pit, I hear the booming bass of Adam Clayton's, the barrage of drums from Larry Mullen and the Edge's hailstorm of guitar riffing. I swing around and come back to my senses and realize I have three songs (and probably 10-15 minutes) to snap my shots before security ejects me out of the bomb shelter and I'm back on the GA floor again. But snap away I do though, and as the house lights come back on, and fans slowly exit the arena after that blur of a concert takes place, I jump over a barrier and sit down for a moment with my Argentinian buddy and watch the crew members quickly take apart the whole scene, faster than they put it together. It's off to another city, another state, another world, for a band to ride the crest of their momentum and spread their messages and music to more souls in their encounters. I get their music. I get their message. I get the picture.

Jonathan Wayne
October 25, 2005

Posted by Jonathan at 01:41 AM | Comments (6)

July 20, 2005

When U2 Comes To Town

by Christina Dimitrova, Sofia Echo

There is a belief that if you leave a piece of paper with your wish in a crack in the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, it will come true.

When my mother went to Israel eight years ago to visit a friend, I gave her a handful of wishes to stick in the cracks in the wall. I don't remember everything I wished for back then, but I recall that one of them was to see a U2 concert.

Eight years after she put my wish into the wall, it finally came true.

On July 5 2005, in Chorzow, Poland, I finally saw Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. play in front of 70 000 ecstatic fans from Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and some Russian-speaking country.

I will not go into details about getting to Chorzow -- that is another tale -- I will only say that it was a train trip from hell.

After two days of travelling on various trains throughout Central Europe, I was convinced that someone or something was putting our faith on trial.

Chorzow turned out to be a nice clean little town in the mining countryside of Poland, near Krakow, which has a big stadium, and the local promoters manage to attract big names.

It seemed, however, that U2 was the biggest by far.

The local Metro newspaper had nothing but Bono on its front page, the posters were all over the place, groups of people with backpacks were camping out in front of the stadium hoping to get better places when the gates opened at 3 p.m.

After sleeping for several hours in the hotel, having lunch and stocking up on Polish vodka and beer for the afterparty, we got into the stadium and sat under a tree along with hundreds of other eating and drinking fans, slowly sipping our beer with a growing sense of belonging -- between the 10 of us and the thousands of other fans from near and far.

Halfway through the first support band -- the Magic Numbers -- set, the sky ripped open and drenched us. Then it stopped.

When we were almost dry, after the set of the second band, the Killers, who I am told are big on MTV now, it rained heavily again.

But it didn't really matter. We were keeping ourselves warm by doing the Mexican wave.

At around 9 p.m. they switch off the stadium floodlights and turn up the music.

The 70,000 people go eerily quiet.

It stops raining.

All eyes are trained on the empty stage, waiting for it all to start. And then U2 walk out, just like that, and Bono counts: "Uno, dos, tres, cuatro!!!"

The stadium explodes into screams and applause, while Bono greets us with, "Hello, hello, we're at a place called Vertigo."

For the first few minutes I just cannot comprehend the events around me.
Ever since I saw the Zoo TV concert in Sydney 12 years ago, I've been dreaming of seeing this band live.

To put it simply, U2 is the soundtrack of my life.

During "I Will Follow" and "Electric Co." I finally come to my senses and totally appreciate the snippet from "I Can't Stand the Rain," which Bono sings looking at the low grey clouds.

"Elevation" follows, which, elevating as always, prepares the audience for "New Year's Day."

At the first chords of the Edge's piano, something astonishing happens and sends chills down my spine.

The fans on the floor take out red cloths, flags and T-shirts, while the people in the stands take out white ones and form a huge red-and-white Polish flag.

Bono, being the showman he is, hits his chest and bows, then takes off his black jacket, turns it with the red lining out and puts it back on. The audience goes bananas and starts waving their flags frantically. After the concert I found out that the Poles associate this song with the Solidarnosc movement of the 1980s.

In "Beautiful Day" Bono, still affected by the sight of the enormous flag, changes the lyrics to "see brand new Poland right in front of you" and the audience applauds.

"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" turns into a gospel choir with everybody singing, shaking and clapping in unison.

Spirits are already high and the general feeling of elated joy spreads among the people.

During "All I Want Is You," probably one of the most passionate love songs ever written, people take out mobile phones and lighters and the stadium turns into a sea of tiny lights. Bono walks out onto the catwalk and pulls a woman from the audience up onstage, holds her and they dance cheek to cheek.

The lit-up stadium blends in nicely with "City of Blinding Lights," during which the huge light bead curtain behind the stage finally comes to life with images.

Before "Miracle Drug," a song from U2's most recent album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, Bono tells the story about a Polish boy who grew up in that region who once stole his sunglasses, but gave him a rosary in return. "Miracle Drug" is devoted to John Paul II.

The next ballad, "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own," Bono devotes to his father, Bob Hewson, who died of cancer in 2001. Lighters and mobile phones are out again.

The following three songs -- "Love and Peace or Else," "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "Bullet the Blue Sky" -- are so full of the raw energy and passion typical of U2, that the 70,000 fans, myself included, just cannot stop screaming, jumping and stomping their feet.

The entire band walks out onto the catwalk among the audience. Bono wears a white bandana with the Christian cross, the Muslim crescent, the Star of David and the word "coexist" interwoven through the symbols.

"Lay down your guns/All your daughters of Zion/All your Abraham sons" -- Bono is marching around, twisting and turning, demanding and pleading. The audience responds with screams and applause.

"From the firefly, a red orange glow/See the face of fear running scared in the valley below" -- Bono is on his knees, blindfolded, with his arms behind his back, creating a disturbing image of the kind we all have seen on CNN and Al Jazeera.

The stage is flooded with smoke and blood red lights while the Edge is making his guitar screech and weep.

The audience is clapping in unison and screaming at the tops of their lungs, while Bono takes up the beat of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." The emotions in the stadium reach another peak when Bono takes out a harmonica from his pocket and strikes up "Running to Stand Still."

People are holding each other and slowly dance in the stands, while from the stage Bono raises his voice in "Hallelujah" against the background of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights projected onto the light curtain behind him.

"Pride" and "Where the Streets Have No Name" raise the spirits to new heights and everybody feels that the time for a sermon has come as the flags of African countries run up and down the light curtain.

Bono, however, only gave a little speech about how we should unite our efforts to make poverty history and how G8 should cancel the debt of the poorest countries. Perhaps he feels that the audience in this former communist country is not as wealthy as those in the U.S. or Western Europe.
The concert ends with "One" -- that lovely song of which I can never get enough.

There are two encores, which include "Zoo Station," "The Fly," "With or Without You" and "All Because of You," "Yahweh" and "Vertigo."

During "Zoo Station" and "The Fly" we get a taste of the glorious days of Achtung Baby and Zoo TV and it looked like Mr. MacPhisto was back to make a phone call.

No phone calls that night. At least not during the concert.

Maybe Bono had a word with the skies and arranged for the rain to stop. Or perhaps Bono stopped it himself.

I don't know.

The fact is that there was not a drop of rain from the low, grey-orange clouds hanging above our heads during the entire U2 concert, which lasted slightly more than two hours.

After the indisputable "The End" was projected on the light curtains, the stadium emptied quickly.

As we were walking back to our hotel that night, we agreed that this was the greatest night of our lives. We had waited a long time and had come a long way to make this dream of ours come true.

Maybe next time U2 will come to Bulgaria and we can stage a Bulgarian flag in the stadium, just to show our appreciation of the fact that this band has finally honoured our country as well.

Because after sharing that evening with my nine companions and the other 70,000 fans, after this almost religious experience, being the true fan that I am, and sensing the sincerity this band puts into everything they do, be it music, charity or political statements, I am sure that having a U2 concert in my country, would indeed be a great honour.

Copyright © 2005 Sofia Echo. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:59 AM | Comments (2)

May 10, 2005

U2's March of the Tired Warhorses Hamstrings Fine Ensemble Effort

By Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune

The corporate juggernaut that is U2 takes over Chicago this week with four sold-out shows at the United Center in-between singer Bono's latest efforts to save the world. These efforts would have been enhanced Saturday by a concert that relied less on U2's past and more on songs that haven't overstayed their welcome.

On opening night, Bono lamented that a decade ago he would place calls to the White House in the midst of the band's Zoo TV tour, but they went unanswered. "They take my call now," he said, and the audience cheered. He went on to urge the audience to text-message his Unite Against Poverty organization which is designed to pressure politicians to follow through on the United Nations' goal of cutting world poverty in half by 2015. It was yet another example of the rock concert as political advertisement, following closely on the heels of last year's Bruce Springsteen-led Vote for Change tour that aimed to oust George Bush from the White House.

U2's gambit will no doubt engender a lot of eye-rolling from those who have grown tired of Bono's increasingly high celebrity-activist profile. But the singer's social activism also had musical relevance, as it provided the thematic backbone to U2's current tour. During a sequence of songs including "New Year's Day" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday" that addressed how religion continues to become an excuse for violence, he donned a scarf adorned with religious symbols and declared, "Jesus, Jew, Mohammed is true."

The scarf became a blindfold on "Bullet the Blue Sky," which segued into the Civil War anthem "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." It was a bit of Bono-esque theater, part hokum but all heart.

For anyone who has felt anything for the band since it made its Chicago debut more than two decades ago at the Park West, the do-gooder self-righteousness is part of the package. It's driven as much by ambition and ego as it is social and artistic reasons, and sometimes it works spectacularly: Zoo TV, unanswered White House phone calls and all, remains a landmark of multimedia arena rock.

My quibble is not with the motive so much as with the execution. Things got off to a rocky start a few months ago, with a bungled ticket sale that brought a public apology from drummer Larry Mullen Jr. at the Grammy Awards, and again from Bono during Saturday's encore.

The tour follows the release of the band's latest studio album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, but doesn't really make a case for it. Though the album is strictly U2-by-the-numbers, a retreat back to its early '80s sound, the stage is the true measure of the quartet's songs.

The band was in fine form: Bono brought a new sense of nuance and phrasing to his singing, the Edge delved into blues by way of Jimi Hendrix during his guitar solo on "Bullet," and Mullen and bassist Adam Clayton remained implacable guardians of the Big Beat. Little wonder the Atomic Bomb tracks came on strong at the United Center, with a tambourine-inflected "All Because of You," a luminous "City of Blinding Lights" bathed in confetti, and especially a hymnlike "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own," with Bono paying tribute to his late father while pacing the walkway that ringed the elliptical stage. Here was U2 at its best, shrinking a stadium to a living-roomlike level of intimacy.

But at least half the show was consumed with a run through U2 warhorses that were already starting to sound exhausted on previous tours: "Pride (In the Name of Love)," "Where the Streets Have No Name," "One." Save for the belly dancer missing in action from "Mysterious Ways," this was tired nostalgia, apparently to sate customers who shelled out hundreds of dollars for tickets.

It appears U2 is falling into the same trap as the Rolling Stones: Charging big money for a stadium show obligates the band to turn into a hits jukebox. But especially in a city such as Chicago, where U2 has been embraced like few other bands, the quartet can afford to take more chances. The promise of U2 has always been big music tied in with conviction, imagination and innovation. Now the band sounds like it believes less in its ability to surprise and dazzle with its new music, and more in the necessity to recycle its past. If that trend continues, U2's avid concern for social justice won't be enough to keep it relevant.

Copyright © 2005 Chicago Tribune. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:37 AM | Comments (6)

April 15, 2005

U2 Mixes Spectacle and Emotion

By Larry Rodgers -- AZCentral.com

Irish supergroup U2 has staged spectacles for years, and Thursday's installment of its "Vertigo" tour at Glendale Arena certainly had its bells and whistles.

Most impressive on the visual front was the use of huge beaded "light curtains" that could programmed like a stadium scoreboard on steroids to flash colors, words or -- during a call for world unity by politically outspoken singer Bono -- a waterfall of flags from around the globe.

The band used an elliptical stage similar to the heart-shaped number employed last time out, enabling Bono and guitarist the Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. to strut far out into the arena's floor, with a group of lucky fans mulling about in the middle of it all. The stage was ringed with an array of lights used to set all types of moods.

Although Thursday's concert had its share of fun moments, it was more about a band exploring new ways to present its 25-year-old catalog and, just as important, the messages behind that music. (U2 returns to the arena tonight for a second sold-out show.)

So before the band could tear into a glitzy, laser-guided version of its iPod-friendly anthem, "Vertigo," it opened the evening with "Love and Peace or Else," from its latest album, "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb." "Lay down your guns, all you daughters of Zion, all you Abraham's sons," Bono sang, standing with his bandmates at the farthest reach of the catwalk. The singer, who turns 45 next month, still has plenty on his mind after decades of writing and performing, and he acted out plenty of it in Glendale.

The band kept things a bit lighter for the first half of the set. The audience, which stood for 98 percent of the concert, needed no prodding to sing along in 2000’s "Elevation," while the tune was given a slightly stripped and funkified treatment by the Edge, Clayton and Mullen.

Bono crawled around the stage on all fours and then played to fans' cameras as U2 performed what he called "a song from a long time ago" – "The Electric Co.," from its 1980 debut album, "Boy." The blissful looks on the faces of those fans near him and the sea of outstretched arms were reminders that there may not be a more magnetic and well-loved front man in rock and roll today.

The new "City of Blinding Lights" was uplifting both sonically and lyrically, with Bono singing, "Oh, you look so beautiful tonight" as the crowd was bathed in bright light.

But Bono & Co. summoned the most emotion for a six-song sequence that closed the main portion of the concert. Starting with the anti-war sentiment of 1984's "New Year's Day," the band took aim at the folly of war ("We’re so sick of it!," Bono screamed during "Sunday Bloody Sunday," which had heavier, more aggressive guitar work than usual) and the costs of those battles (One of the evening's several small interludes had Bono singing "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" in a voice full of melancholy). The singer drew huge applause by dedicating one song to "the brave women of the United States military," but the selection was 1987’s "Running to Stand Still."

Human rights and poverty took center stage as the band projected excerpts from a 1948 United Nations proclamation calling for global equality and condemning torture, abuse and slavery during "Running To Stand Still." Audience members were asked to use the text-messaging systems on their cell phones to sign up for a campaign to fight poverty during "One," which also was had a more funky edge.

During the still-powerful "(Pride) In the Name of Love," Bono couldn't resist reminding Arizonans about 1987, when the band issued a statement during a visit here blasting Gov. Evan Mecham for revoking the state's Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. "Remember, Arizona, when there wasn't a Dr. King Day?," he asked. "This is a better day. Dr. King’s dream was big enough to fit the whole world."

Despite the high-tech glitz and the politics, U2 seems more reserved on this tour, both musically and in the way its members moved about the stage. Performances of such hits as "Mysterious Ways," "New Year's Day" and “Where the Streets Have No Name" sounded earthy and economical, and that was just fine.

Perhaps after the emotional drain of its last American tour, when the names of those who died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were projected on the walls and ceilings of arenas, U2 felt that a slightly more low-key approach was warranted this time out.

Or it could be that U2 is settling into an elder statesman's role in the world of bands that can still really rock and are still very relevant (that's a pretty small world, by the way).

But no matter how it tweaks each global outing, U2 remains one of the most awe-inspiring forces on the rock stage today. And Thursday's powerful, poignant performance was no exception.

Posted by Chris at 01:34 PM | Comments (6)

March 31, 2005

Heartfelt Ambition: Challenging Personal Themes and Enduring Energy Keep U2 More Relevant Than Ever

Robert Hilburn

Great rock bands tend to be built for sprints rather than marathons. They come and go in brief bursts of glory, usually torn apart by internal problems or the inability to maintain a creative edge. Nirvana was gone in the blink of an eye. The Beatles never really made it out of the '60s.

All this makes U2 unique.

One reason for the band's continued relevance after a quarter-century is that the quartet keeps challenging itself -- never more so than in the captivating new world tour, which began Monday at San Diego's Sports Arena.

U2's latest album, "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb," is a thoughtful, deeply personal look at faith, family and rejuvenation; not exactly easy themes to build an arena rock show around. Yet the band brought the spirit of the album to the stage in a two-hour set that was as warm and eloquent as the songs.

Rather than open with "Vertigo," the rousing hit from "Dismantle" that is such disarming fun that even its use in the iPod ad campaign hasn't sabotaged its charm, U2 started the concert Monday with "City of Blinding Lights," a song that touches the heart of the new CD even more clearly.

In "City" and elsewhere, Bono speaks, among other things, about maintaining youthful innocence and faith: "Time ... time/ Won't leave me as I am/ But time won't take the boy out of this man."

With the audience already on its feet dancing to the beat, Bono screamed the familiar opening line of "Vertigo" -- "Uno, dos, tres,
catorce" -- and the 17,000 fans were hooked even more by the liberating strains of the guitar-driven music.

U2 then cut dramatically to a medley of tunes from its first album, 1980's "Boy," taking us back to the beginning of its journey, as
musicians and people. The band members were on the edges of 20 when that album was released and the music was bathed in the innocence and aspirations of youth.

In "Dismantle," Bono, the parent and adult, looks back at some of those ideals. Where he once thought it was only a matter of time until questions of faith and life would be resolved, he now knows some of life's mysteries will never be known. Still, it's important, he says, not to succumb to cynicism and indifference.

To explore that theme, U2 featured seven songs from the CD in the concert, the most powerful of which was "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own," which Bono wrote about his efforts to get closer to his father before the latter's death in 2001. Marching around the heart-shaped ramp that the group has brought with it from the last tour, Bono told about discovering during the process how dependent he was on his father despite the distance between them. Near the end of the song, it is clear he, too, is seeking comfort: "Don't leave me here alone."

For a band that made its mark with soaring, guitar-driven anthems that commanded you to march along, these new songs are all the more touching because they rely on the superb subtlety and restraint of U2 as
musicians.

Instead of the rows of massive video screens the band has used on previous tours, it also aimed for an intimacy in the arena by employing only a modest screen above the stage, thus forcing the audience to watch the band members rather than larger-than-life video images. The sense of community is further stressed by the showing of all four members of the band, not just Bono.

Throughout Monday's set, U2 played, to use the title of its most affecting anthem, as one, with the sound blending together with almost uncanny force and unity. The Edge's guitar lines, the band's most inspired feature, can be both caressing and explosive, sometimes in the same passage. The rhythm section of bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. adds a relentless urgency to the music that backs Bono's vocals ideally, allowing his voice to soar as if he were playing a cathedral or whisper as if in a confessional booth.

The band reprised some of its most powerful old material, including the despair of "Running to Stand Still" and the commentary of "Sunday Bloody Sunday." It also strung together "Pride (In the Name of Love)," "Where the Streets Have No Name" and "One" in a moving segment during which Bono became the voice of world compassion.

Even some U2 fans used to mock Bono as "Saint Bono" for what seemed to be grandiose social ideals, but his steady devotion to social causes over the years has made him not only accepted in the role, but gives the music even more relevance because he is trying to turn his words into action.

For the final encore, however, U2 again relied on two "Dismantle" songs: a speeded-up treatment of "All Because of You," one of the most overtly devotional songs on the album, and "Yahweh," another statement of compassion and grace that includes the line, "Take this soul and make it sing."

By most rock standards, the gentle ending was too understated for the start of a tour, but it was a bold, triumphant move.

Rock 'n' roll has been built mostly on edgy elements, including rebellion, irreverence and exuberance. The Beatles became the first great rock band by both reflecting each of them and by introducing a strain of social optimism through such tunes as "All You Need Is Love."

While thousands of bands have experimented with the rebellion and irreverence, U2 has explored the idealism with a dedication and conviction that would not only have impressed the Beatles but that has earned it a place alongside that band at the very creative heart of rock.

Only Bruce Springsteen, perhaps, of post-'60s artists with such mass appeal, has approached each show with U2's unwavering passion and purpose. He tries to give his best in each show, he says, because someone in the audience may be seeing him for the first time and he always wants that newcomer to see the band at its best.

Bono and U2 have taken that mission even further. It's as if they believe there may be someone in the crowd who has been to every show, and they want to make sure that fan is touched deeper each night.

That fan would recognize in an instant that U2 was standing still if it took the easy way out and, like so many other veteran bands, just served up a "greatest hits" show every night.

No way anyone thought that Monday.

U2 didn't just take the audience in its arms the way it has for 25 years now, the band took it inside its heart.

Copyright © 2005 LA Times

Posted by Jonathan at 02:46 AM | Comments (10)

November 13, 2004

An Eloquent and Ravishing Explosion: U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

Thunderstruck, November 13, 2004

An Eloquent and Ravishing Explosion:

U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

by Kenneth Tanner

U2 continues to defy the conventions of rock on its latest, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, whittling away at the romantic and transient roots of the form on songs like "Miracle Drug" and "A Man and a Woman," and--on their 11th studio album in 28 years--defeating an egocentric tradition that has left many of the best performers and acts in ruins.

At first it seems Atomic Bomb might be an admirable twin of All That You Can't Leave Behind, a stellar record by any standard, but not quite reaching the achievement of The Joshua Tree, or the band's magnum opus, Achtung Baby!

Then the stoic, folksy authenticity of "One Step Closer," the shimmering, convicting irony of "Crumbs from Your Table," and the glittering, expectant wisdom of "Original of the Species" transcend expectations and confirm hopes -- and what else does this band trade in but hope?

Another day with the record will banish any doubt that Atomic Bomb is, song for song, a work of art: complex, gutsy, intimate, demanding, eloquent and ravishing.

Atomic Bomb belongs in the top tier of U2's very best records. Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby! and Atomic Bomb are sonic masterpieces by different measures, separated by more time between their release than any of the best Beatles albums (to take one instance), marked by ascents in the band's songwriting and virtuosity (how many successful acts study music and work with master teachers of their art between records?), and leavened by the band's insatiable collecting of influences.

Lyrically, Atomic Bomb seems the most conspicuously Christian record U2 has released since October (and I'm the sort of believer who considers "Wake Up Dead Man" as faithful a Christian prayer as, say, "Gloria").

The protagonist of Achtung Baby!, a prodigal entranced by a moonlit night and the kiss of seduction, fumbles his way back home only to find that darkness lingers. Now the wanderer is chastened: romantic notions no longer hold sway, the eyes of the heart rule the intellect, true love is at home. Yet, restless for Love, he wrestles with the Almighty: kneeling (always kneeling), pleading for intervention (how long must the world abide before the new dawn?), over and over again offering his heart ("take this heart and make it break" are the album's closing words), seeking now a kiss from God.

"Yahweh" is a postmodern Christmas hymn. It looks in hope to the birth of Christ ("always pain before a child is born") as it presses home a question the Father's long-awaited gift evokes in honest souls: "Why the dark before the dawn?" "Miracle Drug," "Crumbs from Your Table," "Vertigo," "Love and Peace or Else," and "Yahweh" not only allude to but even depend on the Gospel to disclose their meaning.

I'm bound for some Paul McGuinness-inspired purgatory for using the words "Christian record" in the same sentence with "U2," but I think the band is big enough (and mature enough) now not to worry overmuch about people getting the wrong impression (who would mistake these guys for Bible thumpers?). The band was right to resist the label--no doubt it would have limited their audience and their art at earlier stages--but it seems time to simply live with the contradictions and let the chips fall where they may.

On All That You Can't Leave Behind and during the subsequent tour, U2 expressed Christian faith with excerpts from the Psalms, hallelujahs to the Almighty, and urgent activism on behalf of "the least of these." During the tour Bono had told one reporter, "It feels like there's a blessing on the band right now. People say they're feeling shivers--well, the band is as well. And I don't know what it is, but it feels like God walking through the room, and it feels like a blessing, and in the end, music is a kind of sacrament; it's not just about airplay or chart position." It was a temperate yet unapologetic witness, not showy or preachy but unashamed, and that spirit continues on Atomic Bomb.

The abandonment of romance for a truer love (of the "tougher," more resilient, yea eternal, variety) is a common theme on Atomic Bomb, and though it might strike contemporary ears as paradoxical and uncool (is this rock & roll?), it seems Bono's experiences in Africa have taught him to distrust reigning American and European definitions of the beloved. "A Man and A Woman" is a realist's tribute to monogomy and a celebration of Bono's marriage to Ali (the lyric echoes Bono's attempts in interviews to describe the mystery of his bride and the miracle of their relationship).

If Achtung Baby! was the divorce album, Atomic Bomb is the marriage album, and reflected in Bono's marriage to Ali is the singer's marriage to God. When, at the end, he prays "take this mouth and give it a kiss," the Bridegroom of Song of Solomon is the teacher he seems to have in mind, the master who teaches him how to kneel at the album's start and to whom he turns at the end--what to do with his hands, feet, heart, and soul between this broken time and the marriage supper of the lamb?

"One Step Closer" is reminiscent of Dylan, though it judiciously employs (Eno's?) techno-ambient tricks. It's a beautiful sleeper that, along with its sonic opposite, "Love and Peace or Else" (a grimy, infectious groover with the fattest Clayton bass line ever), reveals U2's perennial ability to craft strange and deeply appealing songs from motley raw materials.

The music is breathtaking in parts (the Edge, Clayton, and Mullen are at the full flight of their considerable powers here), especially on "Crumbs," "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own," and "Original of the Species," which seem the best of the pack--the finest marriage of melody and lyric. Any of these songs is a cinch for Record of the Year in 2006 ("Vertigo," a wonderful wall of noise, is eligible this year). And, as ever, the band reaches out for new sounds while bringing back hints of its moments past (the best artists always do).

Frederick Buechner once said, "It's really very easy to be a writer--all you have to do is sit down at the typewriter and open a vein." Bono opens several on this record, and for a band that throughout the 90s prided itself on distance, these last two U2 albums explore interiors and reveal intimacies rarely expressed in rock. We've now been given permission to eavesdrop, and the conversation is direct and unafraid.

"Sometimes," written for Bono's father, Bob Hewson, as he lay dying in hospital, is the showstopper, as honest a confession as any rock band has ever laid down. It deftly puts the lie to the notion that rock & roll can't handle (much less recapitulate) the deeper experiences of life. U2 has made a career out of debunking that myth, and the genre will have made a significant stride if the band's contributions win the day.

In recent interviews Bono has said the "Atomic Bomb" of the title is his father ("he is the atomic bomb in question and it is his era, the Cold War era, and we had a bit of a cold war, myself and him"), and in others places he's said it refers to his emotional volatility in the wake of his father's death ("looking back, now I've finally managed to say goodbye, I think that I did do some mad stuff"). Bill Flanaghan's and Neil McCormick's accounts of the band's rise show the metaphor is an apt one for the father and the son. Earlier this year, Bono reportedly asked the songwriter Michael W. Smith if he knew how to dismantle an atomic bomb. When Smith said he didn't, Bono responded "Love. With Love."

Bob Hewson was an amateur opera singer who loved to listen to operas in his sitting room at night, directing the songs, as Bono recalls, with knitting needles. On "Sometimes," when Bono scream-sings "you're the reason I sing/You're the reason why the opera is in me," it occurs that Love is able to dismantle the bomb in the father and the bomb in the son; that Love has the ability to disarm any weapon of destruction, material or spiritual, no matter how large, no matter how small. That comes as good news about right now.

The American theologian Robert Jenson says that, unlike political ideologies, the Spirit makes us free not from each other but for each other. Of all the rock cliches the U2 brothers overturn, it is perhaps their love for each other--held together despite strong wills and tested by time--that enables not only their longevity but an enduring ability to produce albums of rock music that belong among the genre's best.

Neil McCormick reports that after working five-day weeks for about a year the band had nearly the same set of songs ready for release last October, but it sensed an "indefinable magic" was missing. U2 spent another year working to find it. Bono told one reporter, "Whether it's Catholic guilt or whatever it is, it's not on to have this life that we've been given--this amazing life--and be crap."

Their fans can be grateful for a veteran band that refuses to settle for second best, and at a career point when acts think they've earned the right to be mediocre. That might appear to be the band's self-interest speaking (who wants to buy a "crap album"?), but it still takes humility to serve anyone (even rock fans), and the hard work that produced the double-barreled art of U2's last two albums needs not only a touch of grace but the cooperation of courage. It's faith active in love.

Ken Tanner's (kennethtanner@mac.com) sole claim to fame is that he was once a college buddy of Steve Beard. He works for Touchstone Magazine in Chicago, is ordained in the Charismatic Episcopal Church, and hangs out with his own wonderfully mysterious woman and seven children west of the Windy City.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:23 PM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2001

U2 Kicks Off Tour With Unadulterated Rock, Straight From the Heart

Miami-Ft. Lauderdale Elevation concert, March 24, 2001

U2 Kicks Off Tour With Unadulterated Rock, Straight From the Heart

By Neil Strauss, NY Times

SUNRISE, Fla., March 25 — U2 had nothing to hide when it opened its Elevation world tour on Saturday night at the National Car Rental Center here. The concert, which sold out its 18,800 tickets just minutes before showtime, began with the house lights on and the members of U2 casually walking onstage. With the bright, unflattering lights still blazing, the band began to play "Elevation."

The concept was that there is no concept to U2's new tour and album, and that's a brave thing. It leaves no way to hide from mediocrity: if an album or concert fails, the band can't fall back on the old excuse that the fans, the media, the record company or radio programmers didn't get it. After all, there is nothing not to get about the latest version of U2. It's pure, simple, it's-a-beautiful-day rock 'n' roll. And there's nothing mediocre about it: "All That You Can't Leave Behind" is the band's best album in at least 13 years and the concert proved it, because new songs like "Beautiful Day," "Walk On," "Stuck in a Moment" and "In a Little While" (which the leather-jacketed Bono dedicated to his wife as an apology for not being around for her birthday last week) held their own as classics next to the band's older material.

The tour itself, though a far cry from the spectacle of the group's "PopMart," "Zooropa" and "Zoo TV" stadium shows, was superior in many ways because it involved the audience instead of simply distracting it with gimmicks. U2 must agree, because the band is currently accepting offers on its Web site, u2.com, from parties interested in purchasing the giant mirror-ball lemon used on the "PopMart" tour.

At Saturday's two-hour-plus show, the major prop was a red heart-shaped catwalk, which encircled the stage and 300 audience members, placing them in the very bottom of U2's heart, which Bono ran around and posed on all night. Instead of hiding behind the veneer of irony and flash, the band made an effort to make rock 'n' roll a communal experience, not of a narcissistic one.

Bono ran through the sea of fans on the floor of the arena (which the band is insisting be a standing area that is ticketed general admission), carried a searchlight that he shone on each section of seats, and when the show ended, asked with as much humility as a Bono can muster, "Have we got the job?"

This back-to-reality approach almost resulted in a real disaster for Bono, because while flirting with the audience on the raised catwalk three songs into the set he tumbled off the back of the platform onto the floor, where he lay dazed for several moments before he was able to start singing again. For the band, returning to the roots of its music — simply the ardent wail of Bono; the sputtering, ringing full-bodied guitar playing of the Edge; the puissant, rumbling bass work of Adam Clayton; and the march-meets-rock beats of Larry Mullen Jr. on drums — meant revisiting early songs live.

In a move uncharacteristic of recent tours, the band loaded its set with early singles, including "I Will Follow," "New Year's Day" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (into which Bono inserted a brief Bob Marley medley and waved an Irish flag a fan handed him).

By returning to the basics with such success, the band has forever labeled its 90's work as having made a wrong turn after "Achtung Baby." But U2 refused to disavow the material. It almost seemed to go out of its way to give a nod to its past tours, performing weaker songs like "Discothèque" and appropriately adding extra visual effects to the songs like videos by the Irish artist Catherine Owens.

Fortunately, U2 is not a band that heeds its own advice. "All that you can't leave behind, you've got to leave it behind," Bono sang in an added coda to "Walk On" to close the show.

But in returning to what it left behind (not a bar-rock band, which U2 was never really meant to be, but an earnest arena-rock band that believes in the power of a right-headed song that tens of thousands of people can sing along with), U2 succeeded in making opening night of its Elevation tour, despite Bono's difficulty getting comfortable onstage at first and his ensuing accidental stage dive, one of the best big rock shows of the past year.

Copyright © 2001 The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:48 AM | Comments (0)

December 01, 2000

Is This Desire?

Spin Magazine, December 2000 issue

Is This Desire?

On All That You Can't Leave Behind, U2 finally find what they're looking for

By Ann Powers

Throwing your hands up in the air can be an act of faith. Stick 'em up - there's no resisting the way life constantly robs you of control. But open those arms wider, and defeat becomes elation. "Stretch out your hands toward the sanctuary," the psalmist instructed pilgrims seeking the Promised Land. Don't be surprised when submission turns to strength.

U2 know plenty about spiritual abandon. From their early work as flag-waving Christians soldiers through the ecstatic desert wanderings of the mid-'80s, to the fall to dirty earth that started in 1991 with Achtung Baby, the Irishmen specialized in the plunge, riding rock's gravitational pull to states of unchecked emotion. With a force that sometimes seemed ridiculous, each album was a dunk in the river, and loving the band meant giving in - not to God but to the problematic idea of meaningful rock.

Yet U2 have never explored their fetish for surrender with such relaxed eloquence as on All That You Can't Leave Behind (Interscope). Nor has the band ever worried less about proving its genius. After Pop, 1997's uncomfortable tiptoe into techno, they've realized that the rash pursuit of the moment works only for Madonna. Self-respect demands U2 ignore Kid Rock and eliminate the need for Creed.

Fact is, even after Bono stuffed piety down his vinyl pants, people continued to use rock as a source of spirit-raising. U2 light the unfashionable fire better than anybody else, and with age have become more adept at contemplation. Bono's preaching now has an air of weathered serenity. The Edge rarely careens around as if his guitar is a flame-thrower, instead stressing sharp fingerwork. Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, back as producers (with Steve Lillywhite and others helping), use effects - churchy organ, backward violin, whale sounds - but keep the colors between the lines. The songs are still full of deep thoughts, but now they come from a quieter place.

Call it the happy aftermath of a midlife crisis. U2 is relaxing, reasserting some beliefs critics love to shove back in their face - most importantly, that uplifting art is not necessarily dumb. The albums opening one-two-three punch irresistibly makes this point. "Beautiful Day" is a hip-shakingly messianic exhortation of faith found through adversity, while "Stuck in a Moment" takes hope higher in a gospel arrangement that fulfills the Harlem dreams the band's been chasing since Rattle and Hum. Then comes "Elevation," a flat-out sex song seductively posed in an electronica bed. But it's really about love as salvation, with Edge showing his mysterious ways, the rhythm section fluffing its funky feathers, and Bono testifying like he's dreaming of Aretha and feeling like a natural man.

A dip in energy would be understandable after this rush, but U2, being U2, wanna take you higher, as "Walk On" and "Kite" return to the desert of The Joshua Tree. Piano, strings, and background voices expand to fill Lanois and Eno's cathedral-size mixes, and Bono's proclamations swell along with the sound. Every sentence is a proverb of wind and water, but the band offers its inspiration in a modest way, so it doesn't grate.

After these peaks, the record detours into eddies U2 have explored before. The mellow "In a Little While" turns "Satellite of Love" into an Al Green song, with Bono using his new and at times bothersome soul shout, and the real interest coming in the interplay between Clayton's fuzz-touched bass and Edge's Velvety guitar. "Wild Honey" nods at the Beach Boys, and several songs revisit the darker musings of Pop, letting the album drift a bit toward inertia. This detour leads nowhere, especially on the embarrassing "New York," a (hopefully) final bid by Bono to inhabit Frank Sinatra's moldering persona.

But the delicate coda, "Grace," puts us back on solid sacred ground. The song is a parable about a woman saintly enough to be a Lars von Trier heroine. Such an exercise in virtue will put off sophisticates - I mean, where are the supermodels? But as Edge and Clayton spool a slow dance, sparked by tiny cloudbursts from Eno's keyboards, celebrating faith, hope, and love doesn't seem that bad. In fact, it's exactly what U2, giving in to itself, is meant to do.

Copyright © 2000 Spin. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:22 AM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2000

U2's latest a muddle of music both memorable, middling

CNN, November 17, 2000

U2's latest a muddle of music both memorable, middling

U2
All That You Can't Leave Behind
(Interscope Records)

By David John Farinella
Special to CNN Interactive

(CNN) -- 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.

Copyright © 2000 Cable News Network. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:57 AM | Comments (0)

November 14, 2000

U2 - Shiny, happy people

Jerusalem Post, November 14, 2000

U2 - Shiny, happy people

by David Brinn

What goes around comes around. After passionate, spiritual firebrands U2 spent the last decade distancing themselves from their past via devilish alter egos, electronica, and Andy Warhol-laced pop-art irony, Bono and friends have pushed the envelope further by reinventing themselves as... passionate, spiritual firebrands.

Granted the fire is on a lower flame, but All That You Can't Leave Behind leaves behind the giant lemons and garish rock-star trappings, and focuses on the songs. As Bono sings in the relaxed, hummable "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get out Of," "I'm just trying to find a decent melody, a song I can sing in my own company."

He not only succeeds beyond expectations with that minor ambition, but The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen go one step beyond, providing their strongest set of songs since 1987's The Joshua Tree.

They sound like a band who have had the weight of the earth lifted from their shoulders, and dare I say, bubbly and even happy.

"Beautiful Day" is classic shimmering U2, uplifting and inspiring, propelled by Mullen's thumping beat and Edge's trademark jackhammer guitar. But don't think that they're merely repeating past formula. Tempered by age and wisdom, the band no longer attempts to batter the listener into submission with its righteous fervor. Subtlety is the key here, with songs like the sunny "Wild Honey" and "Kite" sounding like an earnest folk-rock combo, not unlike the R.E.M. of their Out of Mind/Automatic For the People period. The band's down-to-earth buoyancy and simple clarity will instantly elicit a smile. "In A Little While" will break that smile into a grin, as the band hunkers down on a seductive Al Green groove behind one of Bono's most soulful vocals ever.

The album provides one new anthem, the majestic "Walk On" that encapsulates all of U2's strengths into four sublime minutes. And the plaintive intensity of "Peace on Earth" finds Bono doing more with less, economically making his point without bluster.

Longtime collaborators Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois create just the right mix of electronic embellishment without smothering the organic quartet interaction. Whether it be the trashy garage rock of "Elevation" or the hymn- like album closer "Grace," All That You Can't Leave Behind is U2 stripped to its essence, keeping only the exquisiteness that can't be left behind.

Copyright © 2000 Jerusalem Post. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:09 AM | Comments (0)

November 13, 2000

Album Of The Week

People Magazine, November 13, 2000 issue

Album Of The Week

All That You Can't Leave Behind
U2 (Interscope)
Reviewed by Steve Dougherty

When not trying to persuade dictators to free political prisoners or the world's leading industrial powers to forgive Third World debt, Bono and the lads like to pick up their guitars and play. And this album is enough to make fans wish U2 would hurry up and save the world already. Music this unique and passionately felt is something to be treasured. As usual, this is big-statement, anthemic gospel rock. But despite a clumsy title (wouldn't the opening track "Beautiful Day" have rolled more easily off the tongue?), liner-note pleas to do good ("Remember Aung San Suu Kyi, under virtual house arrest in Burma since 1989") and some lyrics that might have been lifted from Kahlil Gibran ("And if your way should falter/Along the stone pass/It's just a moment/This time will pass"), "All That" never sounds strident or self-righteous. Bono's voice is as emotion-packed as ever; guitarist the Edge avoids falling into his habitual, Bo Diddley-on-Prozac riffs, and a nice balance is struck between coproducer Daniel Lanois's dark stirrings and counterpart Brian Eno's spacey tweedling. Every track is a tour de force, but "Elevation," "Wild Honey," "Peace on Earth" and "Grace" are especially gorgeous.

Bottom Line: Bono sings; you, too, will follow

Copyright © 2000 Time Inc. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:16 AM | Comments (0)

November 10, 2000

Dayton Daily News ATYCLB Review

Dayton Daily News, November 10, 2000

by Ron Rollins

The best thing about this best of all bands is that, album to album, we never know what we're gonna get. Electronic dabbling? Pretty pop posturing? Guitar-grind freefalling? All that's certain is that whatever direction this world-striding Irish quartet takes will be consummately performed and worth the wait.

If such expectation is a burden, then the bar is of U2's own raising - and the band hasn't let us down yet. Its 13th album keeps the streak going. This time, U2 doesn't feel the need for the catchy cutting-edge surprises of its last two discs. All That You Can't Leave Behind offers marvelously crafted, straightforward, gimmick-free pop-rock.

The record's beauty reveals itself gradually. There is no bombast, no grand flourishes - just supremely catchy, upbeat songs about the joys of being alive: runaway passion on Wild Honey, sly romantic soul on In a Little While; midlife revelation on Kite. Beautiful Day revels in the glories of being around to see another sunrise.

Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen have a lot, indeed, to be thankful for, and have repaid our adulation many times over. In an era when most pop coasts on shallow slickness and so much rock rages with pointless anger, four guys sharing well-played, unironic happiness is a breath of fresh air and much more.

Copyright © 2000 Dayton Daily News. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:58 AM | Comments (0)

November 09, 2000

Rolling Stone ATYCLB Review

Rolling Stone, November 9, 2000 issue

**** (4 stars out of 5)

U2
All That You Can't Leave Behind
Interscope

By James Hunter

U2's tenth studio album and third masterpiece, All That You Can't Leave Behind, is all about the simple melding of craft and song. Their first masterpiece, 1987's The Joshua Tree, imagined cathedrals of ecstasy; their second, 1991's Achtung Baby, banged around fleabag hotels of agony. But on All That You Can't Leave Behind, U2 distill two decades of music-making into the illusion of effortlessness usually only possible from veterans. The album represents the most uninterrupted collection of strong melodies U2 have ever mounted, a record where tunefulness plays as central a role as on any Backstreet Boys hit. "I'm just trying to find a decent melody," Bono sings with soulful patience in "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of," "a song that I can sing in my own company."

Since they shot out of Ireland in 1980, U2 have believed that pop could sing like angels and move like the devil. They have always known devoutly that studio style facilitates meaning. It's why they have always seemed so modern - this conviction that their sonic play of shades, textures, levels and dissolves amounts to more than an end in itself. This belief has always loomed enormously for U2, from the beat-oriented hummable songs of their first albums, which warmed up New Wave's chilly airs, to the largesse of their War-period arena performances, to their engagement with the geniuses of U.S. roots music, through to their itchy recastings, on Achtung Baby, of transcontinental love and panic. This restlessness reached a high point in 1997, when U2 released Pop, an album dipped in club music and dead set on ironic kicks.

Now, after spending twenty years pushing different styles through the roof, on All That You Can't Leave Behind they table everything except that which now seems most crucial: the songs themselves. All That You Can't Leave Behind flexes with an interior fire. Every track - whether reflective but swinging, like "Wild Honey," or poised, then pouncing, like "Beautiful Day" - honors a tune so refined that each seems like some durable old number. Because this is U2, there's a quick impact to these melodies, yet each song has a resonance that doesn't fade with repeated listening.

The melodies mirror the album's production, which is carried off with seeming invisibility by seasoned U2 hands Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, with Steve Lillywhite showing up for a few mixes. Everything coheres in a kind of classically U2 sonic clench: "Walk On" addresses perseverance and reward in its lyrics, but the song is really about its minor-key dance of guitars and rhythms, vocal yearning and hope. "Kite" is about the plight of a fraying couple; when Bono glimpses "the shadow behind your eyes," his lyric evokes the music's slanted conversations of melody and rhythm and guitar figures. Bono's singing has lost some of the extra flamboyance it's had in the past, but it's as passionate as ever - by reigning himself in, he has invested his voice with a new urgency.

All That You Can't Leave Behind gets serious about simplicity. The songs aren't obscured by excessive production, but the band doesn't commit the common sin of boring people silly in the name of scaling back. The Edge's guitars are even more self-effacing than usual, showing up only as conveyors of accent and texture. On "In a Little While," Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen sink deeply into an Al Green whisper-groove, a feat of complex plainness. On the very London pop tune "When I Look at the World," Christmassy synths and choruses achieve an earthy focus, as Bono taps the silver at the top end of his voice.

U2 are no longer idealistic kids. In "New York," the album's penultimate moment, Bono sings as a man in "midlife crisis," desperately drawn to that city's unique brew of noise and reason, chaos and sensation. Scattered throughout the songs are references to having seen and felt and lived a lot. The band is still looking for what's essential, but on All That You Can't Leave Behind, the drama of the search exists right in the music itself, in the tension between rage and gentleness. On "Grace," Bono highlights a girl who "makes beauty out of ugly things." All That You Can't Leave Behind asks the same question again and again: What else in this damaged world would you spend time looking for?

Copyright © 2000 Rolling Stone. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:20 AM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2000

Musictoday.com ATYCLB Review

Musictoday.com, November 8, 2000

by Pete Pruden

Eager to simplify after the restlessness and experimentalism that characterized much of the group's output during the 90s, Irish rockers U2 recruited the all-star production team of Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno and entered the studio with a back-to-basics philosophy. The result is All That You Can't Leave Behind, a work that revisits the sonic palette of earlier classics The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree.

The stripped-down sound of All That You Can't Leave Behind is complemented by vocalist Bono's wistful and reflective lyrical themes, which give the album a tenderness and warmth missing in recent U2 releases. The meditative closer "Grace" finds divinity embodied in a woman. The Byrds-like "Wild Honey" is a straightforward slab of jangly pop pleasure. Best of all is the melodic gem "In A Little While," which finds Bono's ever-powerful voice scratchy, vulnerable, and endearing-this is perhaps the best love song of U2's venerable career.

Despite the gentle, relaxed feel of All That You Can't Leave Behind, by no means has U2 gone completely soft: the echo-laden opener "Beautiful Day" and the crunchy "Elevation" crackle with energy and spunk, reminding listeners that this band still knows how to rock. The contributions of Lanois and Eno, who have worked with the band before, should not be underestimated; the two producers have masterfully captured the nuances that make U2 such an enduring talent. The level of sonic detail on this disc is impressive, and is best heard through headphones or a great stereo system.

If there is any weakness in this record, it is the lack of anything revelatory or groundbreaking-U2 seems to have forsaken exploratory zeal for competent professionalism and craftsmanship. Although not a masterpiece, All That You Can't Leave Behind is an accomplished, mature album from one of the pre-eminent bands of this generation. Perhaps, U2 still hasn't found what it's looking for, but Ireland's best-known group seems to be settling into rock 'n' roll middle age with dignity and grace.

Copyright © 2000 Musictoday.com. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:13 AM | Comments (0)

The Capital Times ATYCLB Review

The Capital Times (Madison, WI), November 8, 2000

by Rob Thomas

There's a moment during the second verse of "Beautiful Day," the opening song on U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind, when the Edge's cathedral-bell guitar begins chiming in.

For longtime fans of the Irish supergroup, hearing that sound is like getting an unexpected letter from an old college friend.

The Edge's guitar defined U2's sound as much as Bono's thrilling voice, but had been muted and restrained in the 1990s as the band smeared techno and disco across its vision.

It's back in full force on All That You Can't Leave Behind, an album that finds U2 returning to straightforward, heartfelt rock. It's a joyful and welcome return.

Aside from a couple of uninspiring tracks (especially the plodding "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of"), this is a strong and very unified album.

"Beautiful Day" is an appropriately big-canvas U2 song, an expression of optimism from a narrator who has nowhere else to go but up. The inspirational "Walk On" could have been lifted directly from the "Joshua Tree" sessions, with its ringing guitars and big choruses.

"Walk On" is dedicated to Burmese freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi, but the actual lyrics are devoid of any political content.

In fact, the lack of political or social themes may be the biggest disappointment of "All That You Can't Leave Behind," coming from a band whose "New Year's Day" and "(Pride) In the Name of Love" effectively married emotion to politics. Perhaps it's too hard to write a catchy chorus around Third World debt relief.

Instead, the tone of the album is more along the lines of "Wild Honey," which relies on an infectious acoustic strum to propel thoughts of an exuberant youth.

U2 seems to be going for a general tone of optimism, rebirth and idealism, rather than any specific messages.

Some may miss the direct commentary on contemporary issues, others who have accused the band of preachiness may welcome the change.

But to unabashedly celebrate such positive themes in a year when greed and aggression rule the pop charts may be the most radical thing U2 could ever do.

Copyright © 2000 Capital Times. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:55 AM | Comments (0)

November 03, 2000

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ATYCLB Review

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 3, 2000

Ed Masley, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

U2
'All That You Can't Leave Behind'
(Interscope)
2 1/2 stars

A welcome retreat from the hollow bid for dance-floor credibility that made an embarrassing electronic mess of "Pop," the oldest anthem rockers in the world ease you into "All That You Can't Leave Behind" with the throb of what appears to be an electronic heartbeat. But it isn't long -- a minute, maybe less? -- before the men who gave the world "Boy" are rocking like they've rarely rocked before, with Bono out front crooning -- with that old-school Bono passion -- about what a beautiful day it is and how you shouldn't let it slip away.

As anthems go, it's nothing short of anthemic.

But to tell you the truth, it's when they pull it back a notch and let you hear the ache and tenderness in Bono's voice as he implores his lover, you, the Lord, whatever, "Touch me/Take me to that other place" that "Beautiful Day" emerges from behind its wall of richly textured bombast as a work of unassuming beauty.

It's not all anthem rock. On "Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of" -- the '80s, perhaps? -- the band turns soulful on the road to church with Bono swearing, "I'm just trying to find a decent melody," to which the only sane response is well, you've found what you were looking for. On "Elevation," it's back to the club, only this time, the dance move is choreographed with an eye on conviction. Bono goes all Barry White on the spoken introduction to the yearning Bon Jovi-esque ballad, "Walk On." And the Edge goes double duty on guitars and strings on "Kite," another moody ballad.

"When I Look the World" scales the heights of U2's most majestic work. But the album's emotional center, "In A Little While," is miles removed from the anthemic world of the Joshua Tree -- a gorgeous, pleading hunk of Memphis Soul, with Bono's gritty vocals sounding every bit as raw and urgent as the best of Otis Redding.

Lyrically, the album has a tendency toward self-motivational sloganeering, positioning Bono again as the Anthony Robbins of stadium rock. "You've got to get yourself together," he urges. "You've got stuck in a moment and now you can't get out of it."

And to his credit, Bono makes it sound a whole lot more convincing than it looks in print.

But unlike Jesus and/or Sting (who's got this tantric sex thing going on when he isn't off saving the world), he can't do miracles. Not even a singer as great as John Lennon could rescue a moment as hokey as "They're reading names out over the radio/All the folks the rest of us won't get to know/Sean and Julia, Gareth, Ann and Breda/Their lives are bigger than any big idea."

Make me puke, why don't you?

On "New York," the album's weakest cut, the singer proves he's no Lou Reed.

And no, that's not a compliment.

What matters, I suppose, is that the older fans will celebrate the fact that "Pop" is now behind them, while the generation Bono hoped to conquer with his techno reinvention -- the serious kids -- will continue to listen to Moby or Radiohead (or anything new and exciting) instead.

Copyright © 2000 PG Publishing. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:18 AM | Comments (0)

Past Perfect

Entertainment Weekly, November 3, 2000

Past Perfect

After a decade of admittedly interesting gimmickry, U2 return to Bono-fied rock & roll: All That...is all that.

by David Browne

U2's current single, "Beautiful Day," opens not with a bang but a murmur. Gray-sky strings give way to a faint rhythmic pulse; slipping into the track like an errant husband coming home late, a hushed Bono paints a dreary picture of traffic jams, luckless circumstances, and sundry frustrations both everyday and cosmic. Then, suddenly, drummer Larry Mullen crashs in, and the song erupts into a euphoric bellow so uplifting "Day" was played during the recent Olympics telecast. We know it's a corny move, and U2 know we know; as the Edge unabashedly told ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY last month, the song has a "classic U2 arrangement." But damn if it isn't effective. For a few minutes, one is transported back to 1988- a time when so much rock, be it mainstream, indie, or hair metalish, actually sought to be sonically and emotionally uplifting.

For anyone still puzzling over 1997's half-baked POP, this type of U2 song is a welcome reversal of fortune. Even more startling in the light of the band's seeming obsolescence, the mood of "Beautiful Day" rarely lets up for the remainder of the accompanying album, All That You Can't Leave Behind. It's as if the band- and Bono, in particular- left the Pop-Mart tour's space-age goggles and inane costumes on the bus. And as hopelessly antiquated as it may sound in the year 2000, it's as if they decided it was time to write and record an album of very good, extremely substantial traditional rock songs with an underlying inspirational bent.

POP had its substantial moments too, but the band came across far from confident blending electronic swooshes into their songs, and the music seemed to slip through their fingers(and ours). Starting with "Beautiful Day", which opens All That You Can't Leave Behind, the new album is unwaveringly assured as POP was tentative. "Wild Honey", all sexual charge and emotional ambivalence, finds a melodic groove and stays there; the equally lusty "Elevation" and "Walk On" (one of many songs with lyrics straight out of a self-help manual) have the charging-horse feel of U2's youth, with a bumpy-noise upgrade courtesy of producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Not to denigrate their early-'90's one-two punch, Achtung Baby and Zooropa, on which the band let its freak flag fly to often lustrous effect, but the new work focuses on songs, not sonic gimmicks, and the difference is palpable. Even when they frill up a track with rootsy touches, like the R&B accents of the lift-yourself-up bromide "Stuck in a Moment," they shake off their stodginess. New-generation dullards like the Wallflowers would do well to scribble notes.

Of course, a U2 album would not be a U2 album without assorted Bono upheavals and quests. Here, the 40-year-old addresses a midlife crisis(complete with apparent affair) in "New York" and longs for "heaven on earth/we need it now" on "Peace on Earth." The songs are heavyhearted, but the arrangements- the grimy urban beats of the former and the delicate balladry of the latter- aren't. (On "New York," you even forgive Bono for describing Manhattan as hot and multiethnic, which is about as original as calling Dublin "drizzly.") Even the Edge dusts off his needles-and-pins leads. U2 no longer seems wary of their tendency toward the anthemic grandiose, and they shouldn't be; it still sets them apart from nearly everyone, with the exception of Radiohead at their loftiest.

Unless it's on behalf of hard-to-recite album titles, All That You Can't Leave Behind doesn't stake any claims for advancing the art of pop music. At this point, U2 wouldn't be the ones to take us there anyway. But at a time when rock feels so earthbound, and dance-steeped albums like Moby's Play provide the musical exaltation guitar bands once did, U2 simply want to reclaim some of that old stomping ground. In their hands, falling back on old habits isn't cowardice, but a virtue.

Grade: A

Copyright © 2000 Entertainment Weekly/Time-Warner. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:02 AM | Comments (0)

November 02, 2000

Top Magazine ATYCLB Review

Top Magazine, November 2, 2000

Review by Will Johnson

U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind (Universal-Island) **** - a title to combine their best qualities from the '80s and early '90s, leaving out more recent experimentations. It's post-Pop pop, which Bono calls "big music". From the Joshua Tree panoramics of 'Beautiful Day', the Achtung! Baby technophonics of 'Elevation' or the Rattle & Hum gospeldom of 'Walk On', the appetite for heart and soul music is back, the sonic soundbite has eaten itself. And, quite possibly, the best modern pop/rock album recorded by a band of 40-somethings ever.

Copyright © 2000 Top Magazine. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:27 AM | Comments (0)

U2 Leaves the Baggage, Retains Brilliance

The Irish Echo, November 2, 2000

U2 Leaves the Baggage, Retains Brilliance

by Eileen Murphy

It will hardly come as a surprise to U2 fans that Bono still hasn't found what he's looking for -- spiritually, at any rate. Throughout their 23 years together, the one constant for the band and their chief songwriter has been a sense of yearning in the music, a constant search for a higher truth to help them make sense of the world. On the new U2 album, "All That You Can't Leave Behind," they seem, at last, able to sketch out a map to help them with their quest.

To borrow a phrase from Larry Mullen Jr., the band has been on quite a musical journey since they answered that ad on the Mount Temple school noticeboard 23 years ago. From the youthful defiance of "I Threw a Brick," on 1981's "October," U2 has worked through righteous anger ("Sunday Bloody Sunday"), quiet desperation ("Bad"), ambivalence ("With or Without You") raw sexuality ("Desire"), decadence ("Love is Blindness"), redemption ("Stay, Faraway so close") and postmodern cynicism ("Discotheque"), they have grown from boys to men -- to borrow a current Bono bromide -- on the public stage.

Simply put, "All That You Can't Leave Behind" is the album it took U2 two decades to write. The band has been able to distill the anger, the desperation, the ambivalence, the sexuality, the redemption and the cynicism of their past work into a breathtakingly beautiful, deceptively accessible work of art.

It's tempting to describe "All . . ."'s collection of 11 songs -- 12 if you buy the UK import version -- as a return to the classic U2 sound. All of the familiar U2 touches are here: Edge's trademark licks (aptly described by Rolling Stone magazine as "pins and needles" guitar work) are at the heart of the first single, "Beautiful Day." Bono still occasionally lapses into that impossibly high register, the "fat lady" voice he perfected on "Achtung Baby." Larry's drums provide a strong rhythmic base (sadly AWOL on too much of "Pop") and Adam's in his own cool bass groove (largely lost in the ambient mess of "Passengers"). But they've cut most of the frills and flourishes, which, admittedly, gave some of the other albums their punch. They've come to the realization that it's all about the songs, and, in the end, that's what they couldn't leave behind.

The band's choice of leadoff single seems vaguely counterintuitive. "Beautiful Day" is one of the weaker tracks on the album, although the lyrics are great (aside from a few notorious clunkers - "Miami" comes quickly to mind -- Bono simply can't write a boring song). A better choice would have been the catchy "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of," which has an irresistible, vaguely reggae beat. It's the band's return to the grand gesture -- Bono's searching again, but this time it's for "a decent melody / A song that I can sing in my own company." Because the album is so much a sum of the band's many parts, it's easy to find echoes of other songs in these new offerings. "Stuck . . ." would segue beautifully into "Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World" -- similar beat, same breezy feel, but the lyrics of the new song are deeper, older -- sober, if you will.

It's hard to pick a favorite on the album - "Elevation" and "Wild Honey" are unabashedly sexy, and it's even possible to give Bono some latitude on lazy wordsmithing like "I and I in the sky / You make me feel like I can fly" in the former.

The track that is likely to cause the most comment is "New York," with its mention of midlife crisis and vague references to infidelity. It'll be tempting for critics to view the song as an autobiographical piece, since Bono turned 40 this year and recently purchased a house in the Big Apple. "In New York I lost it all to you and your vices / Still I'm staying on to figure out my midlife crisis," he sings, acknowledging that he "hit an iceberg."

"Peace on Earth" is the most clearly spiritual song on the album. The man who wrote "Sunday Bloody Sunday" is 17 years older now, and it shows - "Heaven on earth / We need it now" he implores. He's worked through his anger with God, expressed on "Pop's" standout song, "Wake up Dead Man," and is in a more conciliatory mood: "Jesus could you take the time / To throw a drowning man a line? / Peace on Earth." On "Sunday Bloody Sunday" the 23-year-old Bono couldn't believe the news; the 40-year-old has heard it far too often, He invokes the names of victims of the Omagh bombing: "They're reading names out over the radio / All the folks the rest of us won't get to know / Sean and Julia, Gareth, Ann and Breda . . ."

It would be easy to wax on, holding each song up to the light, analyzing it to death. But what really counts is what comes out of the stereo speakers, and "All That You Leave Behind" ranks with the band's masterworks, "War," "The Joshua Tree" and "Achtung Baby." They may not have found quite what they're looking for -- but it's a good bet that their fans have.

Copyright © 2000 Irish Echo. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:08 AM | Comments (0)

U2 Enters A New Era With Recording

The Houston Chronicle, November 2, 2000

U2 Enters A New Era With Recording

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 most welcome 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.

Grade: A

Copyright © 2000 Houston Chronicle. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:06 AM | Comments (0)

U2 Saves The Best For Last POP All That You Can't Leave Behind

The Globe and Mail (Canada), November 2, 2000

U2 Saves The Best For Last POP All That You Can't Leave Behind

Robert Everett-Green

U2
Universal
Rating: ***

It happens all the time in architecture. The architect starts with an assessment of real human need, figures out a few good ways to satisfy that need with the materials at hand, and then gratifies his vanity by wrapping it all around a big splashy atrium.

That's not a good way to make a building, or a pop album. Like an atrium, the big dumb pop anthems that crowd the opening of All That You Can't Leave Behind will get some people's attention, though the best way into U2's newest album is through the back door.

Play the disc in reverse order, and you find a string of groove-based, intimate meditations that are built to human scale, but that easily ramp up to something universal.

Grace, the very last track, is a love song of sorts, but it also plays on the broader implications of the name till the glimmering guitars feel like an escalator rising into transcendence.

Peace on Earth wants to go the same way, but can't help following the detour marked out by the real state of the world, while reflecting on how this could all be different if beautiful words were always true. The irony is subtle, and the thought is effortlessly fused into a tuneful structure that is both warm and freshening.

Wild Honey looks to the small moment for the large feeling, smartly capturing the kind of summery essence sought in more addled fashion by kd lang on her Invincible Summer disc.

And In a Little While pulls the band towards soul music, as Bono sketches his vocal line in sharp confident strokes over a plain-vanilla guitar groove spiked with scratch beats.

After that, welcome to the atrium. Walk On is a cynical stride down the middle of the road, with Whitney Houston waiting, somewhere, for the chance to do a cover. Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of plays the soul card all wrong, and clutches at the cheapest kind of pop apotheosis. Beautiful Day, the album opener, is a cheery affirmation of nothing much, a pop doodle inflated through aggressive production.

U2 and producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno should have known better. But always showing that you know better doesn't necessarily get you on the radio, and no one involved with this project was willing to indulge in that kind of sacrifice.

The result is a very good EP, soldered onto a showy advertisement for commercial pragmatism. As they say, half a loaf is better than none.

Copyright © 2000 Globe Interactive. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:03 AM | Comments (0)

November 01, 2000

U2's Monotonous Musical Monogamy

The Washington Post, November 1, 2000

U2's Monotonous Musical Monogamy

By David Segal
Washington Post Staff Writer

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.

Copyright © 2000 Washington Post. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:32 AM | Comments (0)

Where The Genres Have No Name

Sonicnet, November 1, 2000

Where The Genres Have No Name

By Tony Fletcher

To understand why U2's tenth studio album, All That You Can't Leave Behind, is such a triumph, it's important to understand when they've failed. Twice in its twenty-year career, the Irish quartet has ventured into a creative cul-de-sac of its own devise: first in 1988, with the excessive self-glorification of Rattle and Hum, and, just about a decade later, with 1997's so-ironic-they-forgot-to-put-good-songs-on-it disaster, Pop.

But then U2 has never done things quietly, and their admirable willingness to make mistakes in public is matched only by the group's desire to learn from the experience. After Rattle and Hum, U2 reinvented (and learned to laugh at) itself with the industrial-electronic chic of Achtung Baby. And now, after the misfired mischief of Pop, the group has honed back in on the heart of all great music: the song.

There's a temptation to think that U2 has come full circle — that Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen have boxed up the sequencers and the samplers, burned the neon and the satin, and returned to being the four piece rock band that formed in 1978. But All That You Can't Leave Behind has its share of electronic textures, drum loops and distinctly "now" sounds, too. Play it next to 1987's The Joshua Tree and it's obvious which album is from the 21st century. But the one surviving irony of Pop is that the title could have been saved for now, as All That You Can't Leave Behind is the one full of likely hits.

"Beautiful Day"'s introductory piano chords, synthesized strings and drum loops offer immediate confirmation that Bono and co. haven't abandoned their electronic experiments, yet the vocal harmonies and the Edge's chiming guitars take us all the way back to their first such cry of optimism, 1980's "I Will Follow." That a quartet of 40-year-old men can sound so boyish is testimony to their almost unfathomable drive; that they can also sound so convincing suggests that their intent this time to streamline the recording process proved successful.

Nothing else on the album is quite so infectious, but almost every song reveals its charms quickly. "Elevation" marries Achtung Baby's driving textures with the vocal passion of 1984's "Pride (In The Name of Love)." "Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of" and "In A Little While" successfully mine vintage American R&B, while the inspirational "Walk On", dedicated to suppressed Burmese political leader Aung San Suu Kyi, closes with lyrics similar to Pink Floyd's famous "Eclipse" — "All that you make/ All that you build/ all that you break...All that you steal" — but then references and contradicts the album title by concluding "All this you can leave behind."

While drummer Larry Mullen and bassist Adam Clayton are, as always, solid and dependable, and The Edge contributes ringing guitar and even some beautiful slide work ("Kite"), this really is Bono's album. His voice is back up in the mix, but the forthright wail of old has been replaced by a soul-stirring depth that can only come with age. Lyrically, he's not quite as successful. His faith comes to the forefront of such heavy-handed tracks as "Peace On Earth," (which veers perilously close to "We Are The World" territory) and the album's closer, "Grace" , whose adolescent poetry ("Grace, it's the name for a girl/ It's also a thought that changed the world") is, thankfully, saved by the group's soft, seductive accompaniment.

U2 albums are generally slow growers, so it's much too early to label All That You Can't Leave Behind a classic. One can say with reasonable certainty that it's their most vibrant offering since Achtung Baby, their hardest-rocking one since The Joshua Tree, and their first true soul recording. Based on current form, the next twenty years should be a blast.

Copyright © 2000 Sonicnet.com, a division of MTVi. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:21 AM | Comments (0)

October 31, 2000

Wall of Sound ATYCLB Review

Wall of Sound, October 31, 2000

U2
All That You Can't Leave Behind
Label: Interscope
Genre: Pop
File Under: A sort of homecoming
Rating: 84

by Gary Graff

For a while, it seemed as though U2 was -- quite deliberately -- moving further and further away from its beginnings as an earnest rock group, alternately poking fun at but perhaps also falling prey to the hype. Dating supermodels? Wearing personalized cowboy boots and orange jumpsuits? What happened to the four Irish moppets wearing stretch pants, sporting floppy 'dos, and singing about "Sunday Bloody Sunday"?

On this, U2's 12th album, the Irish rock heroes reposition themselves as modest troubadours merely making the music that's in their hearts. As frontman Bono sings on the second track, "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of," "I'm just trying to find a decent melody/ A song I can sing in my own company." Of course, U2 has never been a band of modest ambitions; it spent the '80s making music to change the world and the '90s making music to change itself Ø losing a bit of its audience and vaunted stature in the process.

Now, as the group starts its third decade, U2 has found what it's looking for is good music, songs that ring with melody and hooks Ø and meaning Ø while still weaving in some of the ambient and electronic textures it explored on releases such as Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop. The result is a richly crafted and filler-free pop album on which each song sounds like an individual work, calling to mind mid-period Beatles titles such as Rubber Soul.

With the Edge's silvery guitar licks recalling U2's early trademarks, "Beautiful Day" soars with full, anthemic glory as Bono essays on the rewards of persevering through what appear to be hopeless situations. "Elevation" cranks with fuzzy guitar and industrial underpinnings, while the exuberantly layered "When I Look at the World" sounds like it's about to break into a jig at any point. U2 evokes the spirit of early '70s Van Morrison recordings in "Wild Honey," and vintage soul music is the touchstone for songs such as "Stuck in a Moment," "Walk On," and "Grace."

But what would initially appear to be gentle musings for "Peace on Earth" turn cynical as Bono mourns tragedy -- specifically a terrorist attack in Northern Ireland that killed 29 people. And the tone poem called "New York," whose looped beats and airy ambience make sure that U2 doesn't lose its avant-pop credentials, finds a narrator struggling "to figure out my mid-life crisis" but also exulting, amid Titanic imagery, that he's "still afloat." "The goal," Bono intones at another point of the album, "is elevation," and that's precisely what U2 achieves this time out.

Copyright © 2000 Wall of Sound/Go.com. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:31 AM | Comments (0)

Don't Leave Behind This No-Risk Disc

The New York Post, October 31, 2000

Don't Leave Behind This No-Risk Disc

by Dan Aquilante

Bono and the U2 boys knew everything was at risk when they started recording the 11 songs All That You Can't Leave Behind. The album had to be great, because if it was only good or worse, everyone would have pecked U2 to death. U2 not only succeeded, they created a masterpiece.

All That You Can't Leave Behind is the great U2 album of thundering rock anthems that fans have been waiting for since the early '90s. For this musical achievement, rather than reinventing themselves, U2 has instead rediscovered what made them famous. That's what U2 is getting at in the album's title.

This time out the band's original music vision has been dusted off and polished by producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno - the men who aided U2 in engineering their soaring sonic textures which made "The Unforgettable Fire," "The Joshua Tree" and "Achtung Baby" among the most important works of the last 20 years.

The songs on the new disc, as is U2 style, are personal and passionate. Flip near the end of the album to the song "New York" where the band tip-toes around the edge of storm and then dives head first into the hurricane of the melody.

In the lyrics Bono tries on the shoes of a man who has tossed his own life aside to start again in New York, the Emerald city of strangers. But like Dorothy, the singer concludes Oz is nice, but there's no place like home.

Then there's the I'm-no-good-for-you-song "Walk On." Here the Edge's guitarwork blends with bassist Adam Clayton's and drummer Larry Mullen's rhythm attack to create a sonic scape where Bono's poetic writing is able to blossom.

In this song there is the wonderful turn of phrase "You're packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been, a place that has to be believed to be seen." Passages as tightly wound pepper this album.

The album leaps to higher ground on the neo-gospel "Stuck In a Moment" where Bono takes us to church to bear witness to his message that says stand straight, know yourself and live life. It is inspired both lyrically and musically with a chorus that is difficult not to sing along with.

Vocally Bono isn't as nimble as he was when he was a boy, but his delivery is stronger and he rekindled the fiery passion that was missing on the band's most recent disc "Pop."

The tune "Elevation" with its Little Richard-esque yelps and sweeping, scaling vocal attack are testament to that.

With just a couple of months left in 2000, U2 has created what will be considered by many to be the best album of the year. This is a no risk disc.

Copyright © 2000 NY Post. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:14 AM | Comments (0)

U2 Leaves Little Behind

Inland Empire Online, October 31, 2000

U2 Leaves Little Behind

The Irish quartet took its time on its latest album to blend old and new.

By Cathy Maestri
The Press-Enterprise

It's the album that truly took U2 20 years to make. "All That You Can't Leave Behind" is a synthesis of the Irish quartet's musical history, from its raw, ringing early sound through its discovery of American country and gospel and its recent infatuation with electronic dance music.

The huge sound, the funky grooves, crisp percussion, loops, effects, love, war, acoustics, the ultimately uplifting feeling -- it's all there.

"What you don't have you don't need it now, what you don't know you can feel it somehow," Bono sings on the leadoff track, "Beautiful Day" -- the album's most perfect amalgamation of the old and new. A fairly simple melody filled out with subtle wash of electronic effects, it then takes off, soaring on the strength of Bono's exuberant voice and the Edge's chiming guitar. And then there's the gorgeous bridge, voices atop voices.

Solid hooks and layers of texture make songs at once fresh and familiar. Considering all that's gone into it, the album is seamless. Partly because they returned to longtime producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, while their early producer, Steve Lillywhite, pitches in on a couple of songs -- including "Beautiful Day."

Actually, "All That You Can't Leave Behind" is a more accurate representation of the band than the "Best of 1980-1990" collection released two years ago. Those who miss the band's old days will be just as pleased as those who appreciate any of the directions the band has taken over the past decade.

That U2 took its time on the new album (in contrast to the rush to finish "Pop" to meet the tour schedule) has clearly paid off, from the music to some of the most consistently solid lyrics Bono has ever written. (No more oddball images to complete a rhyme.)

Thematically, the gist seems to be not about falling in love, but surviving it.

"All That You Can't Leave Behind" isn't the landmark that 1987's "The Joshua Tree" was. Nor is it the sort of bold move the band made on 1984's noirish "The Unforgettable Fire" or the electronic/dance direction begun with 1991's "Achtung Baby." But it does qualify as a masterpiece, both musically and in the realization that it's not enough to just keep moving forward if you don't learn from the experience.

"I'm just trying to find a decent melody," Bono sings on "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of."

The song, which refers to suicide, seems to trace musically to the "Rattle and Hum" era, with its "Cruisin' " sort of Smokey Robinson feel.

"Elevation" gets it industrial groove on. But rather than merely the same loop over and over, the song winds again and again -- grounded by Adam Clayton's thick bass, Edge's buzzy, fuzzy guitar effects weave in and out as Bono ("I can't sing, but I got soul") whoops it up; it cycles into a darker break, and then resumes.

"Walk On" gets off to an unauspicious start with a spoken bit meant to be sensual (it comes off like something a boy band might do when it wants to get serious), but soon the sailing vocal-guitar effect pulls it back into line.

"Kite" seems to be a sort of electro-twang, country guitars blended with "Unforgettable"-era manipulation; "A Little While" pegs stripped-down blues on drummer Larry Mullen Jr.'s crisp playing.

"Wild Honey" is the surprise, with its '60s pop lilt and a treatment reminiscent of how U2 handled Thin Lizzy's version of "Whisky in the Jar."

Somewhere between an acoustic carol and Bruce Springsteen, "Peace on Earth" could easily become the season's bittersweet Christmas song. Proponents of the Irish peace process, the song was inspired by a 1998 bombing in Northern Ireland. Its tone is skeptical, wondering if the weary struggle is worth the trouble -- and realizing that it is, even as the question is asked.

Politics and negotiations also inform "When I Look at the World," its low-key drum 'n' bass beat subtle beneath the guitars (more reminiscent of the Flaming Lips' "Soft Bulletin" than old U2).

"New York" is the weak spot, its crackling drum nicely accented with a softer bass, but the Lou Reed-style delivery and atmospherics recall some of the least successful experiments on "The Unforgettable Fire," and it starts to swell too late.

The producers' influence is strongest on the final track, "Grace," Eno's moody keyboards and Lanois' muted guitar making it more than just a romantic ballad.

All in all, U2 has left little behind. It has merely pared it down; what's left is vital.

Published 10/31/2000

Copyright © 2000 The Press-Enterprise Company. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:07 AM | Comments (0)

Help!

Dotmusic, October 31, 2000

Help!

by Ben Gilbert

To put it more accurately and adapt that post-modern adage for U2's ninth album, everything you've read is wrong. Because, despite the almost universal hyperbole that has greeted 'All That You Can't Leave Behind', this is no masterpiece. Certainly not by U2's stratospheric standards.

Over three years since the erratically brilliant 'Pop' and with the 'dark' neo-industrial resurrection of 'Achtung Baby' - the band's peak - almost a decade old, it would appear U2 have shot straight through Heaven and missed God's parking space, such is the lightweight understatement of this record. Rightly, Bono and the boys have been elevated to a magnificently grandiose position, but too much of 'All That You...' rolls past like a spanking red carpet, limped on by leaden-footed royalty.

The album does have its share of inspirational moments. Bombastic single 'Beautiful Day', kicks things off, an unashamedly soaring chorus making up for the suspicion of not much else going on. The marvellously plaintive 'Peace On Earth' somehow sidesteps sycophantic, bilious schmaltz, as Bono chokes on lines such as "Jesus can you take the time, to throw a drowning man a line", while the howling, guitar chainsaw 'Elevation' is expertly adrenalised U2. As affecting is the arch chest-beating and chiming axe envelopes of 'Walk On', a transcendent return to U2's glorious, already legendary past.

And herein lies the crux in many of the thoughts recently committed to print: that U2 have ditched the experimentation and clawing grasps at the zeitgeist, to return to their more straightforward roots. However, the flat landscape of 'All That You...' is not one that this writer recognises. There is little of the widescreen drama of old, a sense of danger, unpredictability, burning devotion, whatever. Call it U2's ability to take the listener by the throat and drag them to the water's edge. Too often, guitars are clean and precise, rhythms safe and rudimentary, the atmospherics staid and the production vacuously pretty.

The worst culprits are the mildly engaging meanderings of 'In A little While', an overblown but underfed 'Kite' and the loose country plod of 'Wild Honey', none of which would dare to feed from the rich man's table of so much of U2's death-defying career. Even the gleaming ambience of much of 'New York' becomes clumsily frenetic and messy, a poor relative of 'Pop's 'Miami'.

Lyrically, Bono, as always, has his moments, but more for foolish aberrations than wild poetic perception. This reaches an absolute nadir - of Gallagherian proportions - on the otherwise fizzing frenzy of 'Elevation', when the "sky...fly...high" treadmill is wheeled-out like a corpse. And that's saying nothing of a mole couplet that no amount of drugs/Third World debt/meetings with The Pope can excuse. He is, though, forgiven, simply for a disarming line in 'Peace On Earth' - "where I grew up, there weren't many trees. Where there was, we'd tear them down. And use them on our enemies".

But such inspiration is, sadly, diluted and as for the decision to include 'The Ground Beneath Her Feet' - originally featured on 'The Million Dollar Hotel' soundtrack - as a bonus track, to, like, sell more records? The word insult springs to mind.

I guess we'll just have to look forward to the stage pyrotechnics of the gargantuan live shows to cover-up the cracks. Have U2 used a lemon yet? Because they've just released one.

***

Copyright © 2000 Dotmusic. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:00 AM | Comments (0)

Yes, U2 Can Go Home Again

The Chicago Sun Times, October 31, 2000

Yes, U2 Can Go Home Again

by Jim DeRogatis

In the now five-decade history of rock 'n' roll, rare are the artists who have been able to sustain a creative peak on their new recordings over time.

Think of the bands and artists who have lasted more than 20 years: Bob Dylan. Pink Floyd. Bruce Springsteen. The Rolling Stones. And, though it's still considered a relative newcomer by many in the baby boom generation, the little band from Dublin that could -- U2.

Drawn by an ad posted on a bulletin board by drummer Larry Mullen, the members of U2 came together at Mount Temple High School in 1978. They released their first album Boy two years later. Eight more studio efforts followed, along with several dramatic reinventions -- from the roots-rock of 1988's Rattle and Hum, to the much-vaunted postmodern irony of 1991's Achtung Baby.

Through it all, the quartet of Mullen, guitarist the Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and singer Bono has remained intact. The Beatles may have invented rock's classic "all for one, one for all" myth. But U2 as a band has now outlived the Fab Four by 12 years.

Not that there haven't been bumps in the road. The group's last album, 1996's Pop, a tired, flaccid affair, found U2 flirting unsuccessfully with techno. It drained all of the fun out of the lyrical sarcasm and musical experimentation that seemed so refreshing on Achtung Baby and Zooropa. And when the band held a press conference at a Kmart to announce its "Popmart" tour, it seemed to bid credibility adieu.

How then to salvage the franchise? Why, go back to the basics, of course. (Re: the Beatles circa "The White Album.")

"We were laying [the single `Beautiful Day'] down in the studio, and the Edge just cut loose a riff that could only be described as classic, early-days U2," Bono tells Billboard magazine. "I froze and said, 'Oh, no, we can't use that. It sounds too much like a quintessential U2 riff!"

Edge apparently shot Bono the dirty look to end all dirty looks.

"It said, '[Buzz] off, we are U2, and this is how I play guitar,' " Bono recalls. "And I got it. I understood that it was time for us to reclaim who we are. It set the tone of the album."

Indeed it did. "Beautiful Day" provides a lilting, melodic opening for All That You Can't Leave Behind (Interscope), which arrives in stores today. Like the 10 songs that follow, it's instantly recognizable as U2--partly retro (it could have been recorded in 1982), and partly timeless (it doesn't sound like much else on rock radio circa the new millennium).

Dave Richards, program director of Q101, says the alternative-rock powerhouse is playing the single in heavy rotation because his listeners love it -- even though a huge number of them weren't born when U2 started its career. In fact, the group remains the only survivor on Q101's play list from the pre-alternative '80s; the Cure and R.E.M. have fallen off the demographic cliff.

"They are going back to the '80s sound, but for some reason, people really want U2 to win," Richards says. "They're the fan favorite. Whereas our audience has given up on R.E.M."

How does U2 continue to sound vital where others of its era fall short? Much of the success is due to a wise choice of producers. After working with Howie B. on Pop, the band has returned to Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, the artistic instigators behind its biggest commercial and artistic successes, The Unforgettable Fire and Achtung Baby.

Eno once told me that his role with U2 was to listen to its new tracks and force the band to erase anything that sounded too much like U2. In this way, he nudged the group to grow and evolve. But there was clearly a different modus operandi at work on All That You Can't Leave Behind.

Bono himself nails the reason for the album's success in "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" when he sings, "There's nothing you can throw at me that I haven't already heard/I'm just trying to find a decent melody/A song that I can sing in my own company."

While U2 offers no new ideas, tunes such as "Elevation," "Walk On," "Grace" and "New York" are positively lousy with big, catchy choruses and memorable Edge guitar riffs. While the band returns to the chorus-drenched sounds of "old U2," Bono skips the earnest preaching that got to be such a drag. Instead of the anthemic "Sunday Bloody Sunday" or "Bullet the Blue Sky," the lyrics tend toward the model of "One"; in their romantic impressionism, they are both more universal and much easier to ignore.

In terms of artistic ambition, this is all a bit of a cop-out, and going back to the well is a trick a band can only pull off once. But at the moment, U2 has given us a disc that is guaranteed to appeal to anyone who has ever cared about this veteran band.

Rating: ***

Copyright © 2000 Chicago Sun Times. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:56 AM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2000

10th Album: A Beautiful Day For Us All

USA Today, October 30, 2000

10th Album: A Beautiful Day For Us All

by Edna Gundersen

All That You Can't Leave Behind is all that you can ask of great rock music. Simultaneously classic and contemporary, U2's 10th studio album exudes warmth, vitality and passion in 11 beautifully crafted songs that recall the Irish quartet's unfussy roots.

But this is no lazy throwback. Thrilling excesses of the '90s -- Achtung Baby's chilly industrial-strength techno, Zooropa's infectious affluenza attack, Pop's club-culture kicks -- have been distilled into smart accents and muted afterthoughts. Simplicity and soul are the forces steering All That 's sublime sonics.

Each instantly hummable track is a melodic marvel of glorious clarity, complementing Bono's openhearted vocals and his most exquisitely hewn lyrics to date.

Poetic but not preachy, direct yet evocative, his words suggest rich pictures and raw emotions without a single syllable of flab.

Imbued with arena-ready drama, Bono's liquid falsetto and gritty baritone convey the humble yearning and lucid emotion of an Everyman, not a messiah.

Nearly every song is a potential single, raising hopes that U2 can restore rock's presence on radio. The euphoric Beautiful Day is breathing fresh air into playlists choking on synthetic pop and seething rap-rock.

Similar highfliers are stacked along the runway: funk-rocking Elevation, acoustic Wild Honey, hip-hopped and gospelized In a Little While, R&B-soaked Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of and streetwise New York.

Produced with admirable restraint by mood gurus Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, All That homes in on the joy and excitement of flesh-and-blood musicians playing tangible instruments without special-effects squads and push-button gizmos.

Bono's soothing wail, The Edge's hypnotic guitar signatures, and the lock-step, molten-groove rhythms of bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen have, like nature itself, an inexplicable synchronicity and organic grace that can't be genetically engineered.

Copyright © 2000 USA Today. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:28 AM | Comments (0)

October 29, 2000

RadioUndercover ATYCLB Review

RadioUndercover, October 29, 2000

U2's 10th Studio Album Is Initially Going To Get A Mixed Reaction

For the band who spent the 90's reinventing themselves, if anything 'All That You Can't Leave Behind' is the undoing of invention.

'All That You Leave Behind' is mellow. The hint to what was to come was last years The Ground Beneath Her Feet from The Million Dollar Hotel soundtrack. That song (included on the Australian edition of this album) set the template.

The first single Beautiful Day is as angry and aggressive as they get this time around. The only other hint of days gone by is New York.

"I'm not afraid of anything in this world, There's nothing you can throw at me that I haven't already heard, I'm just trying to write a decent melody, a song that I can sing in my own company" Bono sings on Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of. These few lines some up the entire context of the album.

Elevation throws back a little to The Joshua Tree sound. With production duties from Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, moments such as this are inevitable throughout peaks of the album.

Walk On gives birth to the title of the album 'the only baggage you can bring is all that you can't leave behind'. Again, another prophetic statement indicating that the 10th U2 effort is from a band content with its illustrious history but not prepared to rest on it.

Kite is the big U2 ballad. Those of you who saw Popmart will be able to visualize this one more on a live stage than listening to it in the context of this album. Numerous U2 songs tend to require visual. This is one of them and offers an insight into the size of u2 as a band. "In the time when new media was the big idea" Bono sings.

In A Little While is almost a Pt2 to Kite in melody. The format of this album starts to cement by the time you reach this halfway point and expectations of a Bullet The Blue Sky start to fade.

The acoustic simplicity of Wild Honey is somewhat of a surprise on first listen, but for the purpose of this review, I've taken advise any have left all comments to after the third run through.

Fact is, like a lot of great albums, it does take the depth of numerous listens to grab the true appeal and All That You Can't Leave behind is certainly one of those albums. That's a good thing. Albums that are great on first listen tend to burn just as quickly. Albums that take time to appreciate do hang around longer. This album certainly has longevity.

The entire middle section of the album is sedate. Peace On Earth is about as preachy as Bono gets. "Jesus could you take the time to throw a drowning man a line, Peace on Earth" he prays.

As we near the end of the album it's like Bono has said to The Edge "I've had my say, you can have some fun now". When I Look At The World and New York start to sound like a band again. New York even has an element of grunt to it.

The final moment for most of the world is Grace, a tender track with the staple Lanois production style massaged by the Eno influence. Grace is equal to the best of u2's quietest moments.

Australian fans have an encore track. The Salman Rushie worded The Ground Beneath Her Feet rounds off the Aussie release.

By Paul Cashmere

Copyright © 2000 RadioUndercover. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:19 AM | Comments (0)

U2's Latest: 'Behind' The Times

The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 29, 2000

U2's Latest: 'Behind' The Times

by Tom Moon, Inquirer Music Critic

The U2 discography is filled with impulsive flings followed by acts of contrition. After the thundering The Joshua Tree brought its "righteous" rock into the global spotlight in 1987, U2 worked to modulate the fury and bring its songs back down to earth. That led to more compact, traditional compositions, such as "Angel of Harlem," written for the partly live Rattle and Hum, released the next year.

Now, after the zany, zoned-out electronic explorations of 1993's Zooropa and 1997's Pop, considered by many loyalists to be a particularly bad creative patch, the Irish foursome returns with an odd assortment of mealymouthed equivocations and dim homilies it calls All That You Can't Leave Behind (Interscope **1/2).

Advance word from U2 is that it has rediscovered its core rock values. The band is all but apologizing for its recent missteps, and vows it will surprise people when it hits the road for a world tour in March.

But be warned: This is rock from a group that lusts for a hit, and will go through any contortion to get it. This is music of the market-research focus-group variety - not too harsh, not too outlandish, lots of melody, lots of empathy. Songs such as "Walk On" and the deliriously sunny first single "Beautiful Day" aren't driven by the fire of true believers; they are the result of bald calculation, a move to solidify a base that may already have slipped away.

If the band wanted to pronounce this its return to some perceived golden age, U2 might at least have turned up the guitars. Gone are the majestic instrumental passages that defined earlier projects, those breathless gallops that gave the music epic sweep and a sense of tension. In their place are tepid little two-chord vamps and nondescript shoe-gazing from the Muzak arranger's manual.

The band's early snarling dissonance has been replaced by an eerie, contemplative serenity. The burrowing, harpooning guitars of Boy (1980) and War (1983) creep in now and then, but more often, the Edge is reduced to workaday strumming. If old U2 was the soundtrack to bustling city streets, this is music of, and for, idle moments.

Apart from the hurtling "Elevation," the rhythms lean on soul and pop as much as rock. Where the album's obligatory, mid-tempo marching-to-enlightenment anthems plod along, the more unusual beats - such as the slinky Marvin Gaye-ish soul of "In a Little While" - find the guys groping toward new expressions, or at least novel ways to frame familiar existential dilemmas. In search of a twist on the typical soul confession, Bono, now 40, guitarist Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen cast themselves as a Detroit lounge band, digging into the spongy beat as though happy to escape the tyranny of rock's rigid crunch. These R&B moments, which include the gospelized "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of," are the highlights of the set: Bono's voice cracks in the most telling places, and the band, disciplined but loose, sounds as if it's enjoying the ride.

But there are problems elsewhere in Bonoland. The singer's attempts to express his high-minded ideals fall woefully flat: The rote "Peace on Earth" and its companion, "When I Look at the World," are State of the Planet addresses. Delivered from on high, they're loaded with sanctimonious indignation and lack the "we're-in-it-together" sentiment that distinguished previous appeals. He's even more cloying when he strives for intimacy: The couplets of "Walk On" ("I know it aches, and your heart, it breaks") try to offer encouragement, but end up striking a talk-show host's tone of glib compassion mixed with indifference.

The most distressing thing about All That is the band's eagerness to regress: U2 spent several years looking forward, grappling with technology and its impact, trying to capture the dizzying contradictions of this on-demand moment. It got close to doing just that. But now, as it crawls back to comfortable, nonthreatening mass-appeal rock, it appears wounded in retreat, tethered to what we thought it had outgrown, imprisoned by what it evidently cannot leave behind.

Copyright © 2000 Philadelphia Inquirer. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:16 AM | Comments (0)

Irish Rockers Return, Gracefully, To Their Roots

The Hartford Courant, October 29, 2000

Irish Rockers Return, Gracefully, To Their Roots

by Roger Caitlin

The problem with U2 in the '90s wasn't its music.

Its songs were relatively overlooked not because of the misleading notion, promoted most often by the band itself, that it had gone all-electronic and modern.

No, the main problem was the overblown image band members invented to go along with their stadium-size status - slick, oily rockers in wraparound shades and gold lamé suits illuminated by giant disco mirror balls. The problem with satirizing crass commercialism is that, to most eyes, it looks like crass commercialism.

Their willfully smarmy persona didn't square with the image of U2 that rose up in the '80s: an important band concerned with important things that performed so urgently, it would make you, too, think such things were important.

It was too easy, too tempting for them to slip back to the major chords, pealing guitars and military march drumming that made U2 the world's top rock band.

To save themselves from being parodies of their strident selves, what they tried to do on 1991's Achtung Baby, 1993's Zooropa and 1997's Pop was to avoid their old selves and force a metamorphosis into something new.

Declining commercial interest in the band may have forced their current move, a return to form that comes on the tellingly titled All That You Can't Leave Behind (Island), the band's 10th studio album, due out in stores Tuesday.

In 2000, there is, at last, no longer any of that unfair pressure on U2 to "save rock 'n' roll" (that monumental task has been shifted to Radiohead, who shrugged it off in style on its nearly guitarless Kid A).

But in the interest of self-preservation - or finally making peace with the sound that made it a success - Ireland's biggest band has returned to its U2 sound of yore.

In these sessions, we have learned, the influential guitarist The Edge was no longer halted when he came up with the kind of ringing sounds he churned up for U2 classics like The Joshua Tree.

It's that approach in accepting the past (and not, say, the constant use during the Olympics) that makes "Beautiful Day," the album's first track, so familiar and welcome.

Working together for two dozen years has given Bono, the Edge, and bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen an unspoken ability to expand and contract their ambitious musical themes.

If U2 can be divided among members striving toward arty electronic esoterica and those who wanted to stick to rock, the latter clearly win on All That You Can't Leave Behind.

If Bono, the charismatic lead singer (and influential world activist), is unsure about this step back, he doesn't show it.

Instead, his remarkable voice has a calm confidence throughout. The word "grace" comes to mind, partly because it appears in both "Beautiful Day" and the final song, "Grace," about a woman who effortlessly "makes beauty out of ugly things."

Middle age has given some measure of perspective to the rock star. "There's nothing you can throw at me that I haven't already heard," he declares in "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of." "I'm just trying to find a decent melody, a song that I can sing in my own company."

In the celebratory "New York," right along the lines of Richard Ashcroft's similar urban valentine, he sings of a friend falling victim to its lures while "I'm staying on to figure out my midlife crisis."

The album reaches a lovely high-water mark with "Wild Honey," (a title previously used, in part, by both the Beach Boys and the Beatles). To a lovely acoustic melody, and the album's most dreamy riff, Bono sings convincingly of the past "when we were swinging from the trees."

While the band's direct activism is limited to the liner notes (where they urge support for Greenpeace, Amnesty International, War Child and Jubilee 2000), they dedicate "Walk On" to Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and speak in utopian terms in "Peace on Earth."

There's no such global focus on "When I Look at the World," which is more concerned with a way to survive its challenges: "I try to be like you."

Which is to say U2 isn't getting soft - it has removed the fly sunglasses and is getting more human.

At a time when most successful rock bands mix bleak howls of cynicism with bludgeoning riffs, U2's ostensible retreat is actually a brave move to bring optimism and joyful music into the new millennium.

Copyright © 2000 Hartford Courant. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:05 AM | Comments (0)

Et tu, U2?

The Detroit Free Press, October 29, 2000

Et tu, U2?

Band betrays its innovative style for bland, simplistic fare.

by Brian McCollum

The thesaurus has been worn thin by awestruck reviewers during U2's 20-year career. But there's one not-so-flowery adjective that's been of little use until now:

Boring.

U2's 10th studio album is a distillation of all the myriad sounds and styles the Irish quartet has explored over the years. Here you'll find the pealing guitars of Boy, the electronic flair of Pop, the spiritual yearning of The Joshua Tree embroidered together.

On one level, it works. Gone is the self-consciousness that dotted the band's latter-day work; listening to the new album, you get the feeling U2 has finally quit trying to make the next groundbreaking soul album, the next groundbreaking electronic album, the next groundbreaking ironic statement, or whatever latest artistic mission has caught Bono's fancy. Instead, All That You Can't Leave Behind functions, perhaps unwittingly, as U2's groundbreaking album of honesty.

Too bad, then, that the record's greatest potential strength is ultimately its greatest flaw: simplicity. In its quest to deliver something more straightforward -- to soberly remember that U2 is "just a rock 'n' roll band," as Bono recently said -- the quartet bogs down in a set of tracks that is overwhelmingly pedestrian.

There are flashes of triumph, most notably the leadoff track and first single, "Beautiful Day," a gloriously busy, layered song that recalls Bono's lyrically astute Achtung Baby days. "You're on the road but you've got no destination," he sings in the rough-hewn lower register that dominates the album's vocals. "You're in the mud, in the maze of her imagination." Elsewhere, songs like "Elevation" and "Kite" capture that song's mid-tempo sense of wonder, with guitarist the Edge, drummer Larry Mullen and bassist Adam Clayton performing as a cohesive rock ensemble for the first time in half a decade.

The album throbs with hopeful sentiment, albeit while occasionally crossing the line into bathos. Bono's eye-rolling "Peace on Earth" seems custom-built -- or custom-scribbled, more likely -- for an all-star sing-along at the next Amnesty International concert. Somebody get Elton John a lyric sheet.

And that's the heart of the problem: Despite colorful production from Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, most of these tracks gasp for air, because the songs around which they're built make for a lousy set of lungs. They're forgettable, hollow, trifling. Pick your word. You don't need a Roget's to tell you when something's bland.

Copyright © 2000 Detroit Free Press. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:59 AM | Comments (0)

Guitar-Driven U2 Gets Reacquainted With An Old Friend

The Bergen Record (New Jersey), October 29, 2000

Guitar-Driven U2 Gets Reacquainted With An Old Friend

Rating: 3 stars

by Ryan Jones

So, you've been waiting for the new U2 record, eager to hear the "classic sound" the band allegedly resurrects on All That You Can't Leave Behind, its 10th and latest studio album. With that in mind, here's a money-saving tip for those expecting something resembling a greatest-hits record: Bono and the boys released that compilation last year.

If All That You Can't Leave Behind comes close to the classic U2 sound, it's only in snippets: a bit of Achtung Baby here, a touch of The Joshua Tree, or even October there. But the overhyped idea that the new record, due out Tuesday, would be some sort of blind retreat into the Irish band's mid-to-late-Eighties heyday proves largely unsubstantiated. And, for the most part, that's a good thing.

First, some heartwarming news for those old-schoolers who greeted the band's two previous studio albums -- and their dalliances with club-friendly rhythms and electronic influences -- with everything from indifference to loathing: This is not a dance record. All That You Can't Leave Behind is U2's most guitar-driven record in nearly a decade, and maybe more important, its most American-sounding effort in longer than that.

Ever since Achtung Baby, the band's famed 1991 reinvention record, U2 has seemingly gone out of its way to deny its New World influences. If intentional, the decision was somewhat understandable, given the chilly critical reception to 1988's hit-and-miss Americana tribute-vanity project, Rattle and Hum.But the band, and Bono in particular, has always had something of an infatuation with America and to shy away from that over the past decade didn't truly represent the group. Given that, much of All That You Can't Leave Behind sounds like U2's attempt to reconnect with an old friend.

The album's second track, "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of," is gospel and soul with a touch of Dylan; "In a Little While" could be a second cousin of "Angel of Harlem"; and "Wild Honey" sounds as if it might have been cribbed from the Jayhawks' songbook. None are among the disc's strongest tracks, but that doesn't mean U2 should give up on its love affair with the colonies. After all, it's a big American city that inspires the best song on the album -- but we'll get to that later.

For now, know this: U2 hasn't forgotten how to craft a song with guitar, bass, and drums (and maybe a synthesizer now and again), and Bono hasn't forgotten how to make magic with his words and voice. In that sense, it is something of a classic U2 record, with The Edge's minimal, chiming guitars filling just enough space, eschewing pyrotechnics for ambience, and the dependable tandem of drummer Larry Mullen and bassist Adam Clayton keeping time and setting mood. Bono is his usual late-model self, comfortable in his lower register, letting the lyrics do their job, unleashing his achy falsetto only when necessary.

And those lyrics. His homeland is famous for turning out an inordinate number of gifted writers and poets, and the man born Paul Hewson is an extension of that lineage. As has been the case for two decades, his most poignant thoughts are often drawn out by political matters. "Where I grew up there weren't many trees/Where there was we'd tear them down and use them on our enemies," he sings gently on "Peace on Earth," an understated plea inspired by the enduring troubles in Northern Ireland. In both its lyrical reference to weeping mothers and its instrumental prelude, the song echoes "Mothers of the Disappeared," the mournful finale on The Joshua Tree.

However, and in spite of long-standing accusations, Bono isn't humorless. On "Kite," he reminds anyone listening that, while his band is aging, it isn't oblivious: "The last of the rock stars/When hip-hop drove the big cars," he coos with a self-referential wink, beating the doubters to the punch.

There really isn't a stinker in the bunch -- "Beautiful Day," the album's opening track and lead single, is smoothly addictive, while the quietly anthemic "Walk On" promises to be a live-show favorite -- but the standout is "New York." The penultimate track continues the band's recent trend of terrific, little-heard gems buried near the end of records (see "Gone" and "Please" on 1997's Pop; "Dirty Day" on '93's Zooropa; "Acrobat" on Achtung Baby) and should go over quite well when the band plays Continental Arena or Madison Square Garden next year. The song manages to combine at least a whiff of every era in the band's history, and a close listen on a good pair of headphones is like a 5 1/2-minute U2 history lesson. It all peaks in the song's refrain: The Edge at his monotone, churning best, Mullen and Clayton thundering steadily ahead, Bono pulling drama from his lungs and his heart.

Like the best U2 songs, "New York" does more than one thing. It tells a story, drops a few hints, references history and politics and love and loss. Much of All That You Can't Leave Behind does the same, finding varying degrees of success but never coming up empty. But all this talk of a "classic" sound? The return of Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno (the production duo behind The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree, and Achtung Baby) to the studio must have something to do with it, and Bono has made comments in recent months that seem to have encouraged the hype. Then, at the MTV Awards last month, he put the hype in check. Responding to the question of whether this record was U2's attempt at "going back" to its past, he said, "This motor doesn't go in reverse."

And so it doesn't. All That You Can't Leave Behind sounds very much like a band moving ahead and aging well. When U2 does reference its past, it does so less for cheap nostalgia than for a reminder of where it came from and what it's learned along the way. Does that qualify as classic? No, and this isn't a classic record. But it is a very good one, and that should be good enough.

Copyright © 2000 Bergen Record Corp.. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:52 AM | Comments (0)

BBC News CD Review: U2

BBC News, October 29, 2000

CD Review: U2

By the BBC's Nigel Packer

It may be better to burn out than fade away, but the best option of all is to do neither.

U2 wisely chose that particular route, and by a process of constant evolution became one of the few bands to remain fresh and relevant over the course of two decades.

All That You Can't Leave Behind, their ninth studio offering, is the kind of relaxed and expansive album which could only come from a band in this exalted position.

After an experimental decade, which began with the frazzled sounds of Achtung Baby and ended with the slick dance grooves of Pop, they have now returned to the original blueprint of big, sincere anthems.

It may bring a shudder to those who found the early incarnation of the band too earnest by half, but happily this is no mere re-treading of the past.

The years of musical travel have enriched their sound considerably, and of course Bono has come a long way as both singer and lyricist since the mullet-laden days of his youth.

Beautiful Day is the album's wake-up call, reassuringly familiar in its dynamics.

Rhythm section Larry and Adam go about their business as unobtrusively as ever, leaving the limelight to Bono's vocals and the shifting guitar textures of The Edge.

And if what follows is not always an outright success - Wild Honey and When I Look At The World sound almost workaday by U2's standards - then the album contains several songs to rank alongside their best work.

Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of is its crowning glory - a beautifully gritty ballad with one of those timeless choruses which seem to have been hanging in the ether just waiting to be discovered.

Mick Jagger and daughter Elizabeth provided guest vocals on an early mix of the track, and sure enough the spirit of the Stones lives on in the song's gutsy-but-tender delivery.

Grace, on the other hand, is a slick fusion of co-producer Brian Eno's artier leanings with the band's more commercial instincts.

An intoxicating mix of delicate guitars and thoughtful vocals, it finds Bono once more revisiting the spiritual theme which underpins pretty much everything he writes.

In A Little While boasts a strikingly soulful performance from Bono, who belts out the melody like a man possessed, and Walk On is a real blast from the past - a sweeping melodrama awash with chiming guitars.

For all the big emotions on show, however, it is perhaps the least dramatic line on the album which best explains the secret of U2's long-term success.

"I'm just trying to find a decent melody," sings Bono on Stuck In A Moment...and sure enough this album highlights his band's uncanny ability to do exactly that.

Copyright © 2000 BBC. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:51 AM | Comments (0)

U2 Comes Back from the Future

The Baltimore Sun, October 29, 2000

U2 Comes Back from the Future

The Irish rockers return to something resembling their past.

by J.D. Considine, Sun Music Critic

On its last album of new material, 1997's Pop, U2 threw its past away and lunged for the future. Sensing a shift in the zeitgeist, the four lads from Dublin declared that rock was dead and insisted they were going to ride the mirror ball of electronica into the next millennium.

Well, everybody makes mistakes.

Now that they're actually in that new millennium, rock and roll doesn't seem quite so outmoded. At least, that's what the group suggests with its new album, All That You Can't Leave Behind, arriving in stores today.

It isn't just that the band has abandoned the synthesized sheen and looped rhythms of Pop and moved back to the guitar-driven sound of its youth; if its lyrics are to be believed, U2 has seen the future and decided it doesn't belong there.

As Bono sings on "Kite," he's "The last of the rock stars/When hip-hop drove the big cars."

So instead of continuing to update its sound, as the band has done since its breakthrough 1987 album The Joshua Tree, this new album marks a sort of sonic consolidation. Instead of dance beats, there's a mild retread of the fuzz-guitar funk rock that fueled "Mysterious Ways." In place of bold new sounds, we get new arranging tricks, like the vintage Chamberlain providing the synthesized string sounds on "Kite."

For those who winced at the band's blind pursuit of cool in recent years, it's probably a relief that U2 stopped before it got to Limp Bizkit. But that doesn't mean All That You Can't Leave Behind is a return to the glory days. For all its strummed guitars and passionately thumping drums, the album never touches on the sonic heroism that made its early efforts so uplifting.

All That You Can't Leave Behind simmers more than it soars, preferring crooned vocals and softly chiming guitars to fist-pumping fury of such oldies as "I Will Follow" or "Sunday Bloody Sunday." That doesn't necessarily mean all's quiet on the U2 front, as "Elevation," "Beautiful Day" and even the semi-acoustic "Wild Honey" all build a pretty good head of steam rhythmically. But even at its most insistent, this isn't an album that begs to be blared from windows.

Blame Bono for much of the music's diffidence. Where once his lyrics wrestled with issues and abstractions, suddenly they've turned personal and self-doubting. "I hit an iceberg in my life," he sings in "New York," and then casts himself as a lesser character in "Titanic": "You lose your balance, you lose your wife/In the queue for the lifeboat," he croons.

It isn't just the lack of heroism that makes the lyric so surprising; it's the naked admission of failure implicit in his metaphor. Even though the lyric assures us that our hero is "still afloat," there's no missing the fact that he sees New York not as a new home, but as an escape. Rather than face the issue head-on, he opts for distance and reflection - and the music mirrors that avoidance of conflict.

To their credit, the lads are more than capable of pulling interesting music from such anomie. No matter that Bono jokes in "Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" that he's "just trying to find a decent melody" - the gently insistent groove and gorgeous, gospel-inflected keyboards behind him make the tune memorable. The song's slow-paced, sweetly harmonized chorus is one of the album's highlights.

Still, it's hard to be happy with occasional cleverness when dealing with a band that was once routinely brilliant. Sure, there's a certain kick to the way "Beautiful Day" builds from the heartbeat thump of its slyly insistent verse to the roaring guitars and triumphant vocals of the chorus. But there's no denying that the song itself is appallingly trite, urging listeners to forget their petty personal troubles and tune in to the beauty of nature.

Been reading the greeting cards again, Bono?

There are moments when it would almost be easier to appreciate the album if you weren't burdened with an ability to understand English. "Elevation," for example, is wonderfully eloquent on a musical level, playing off the rubbery thump of Adam Clayton's bass and the rasping pulse of the Edge's wah-wah guitar. But the lyric is built around rhymes so obvious and nonsensical ("A mole, digging in a hole/Digging up my soul...") you'd think Bono had overdosed on Dr. Seuss. Except Dr. Seuss generally reads better than that.

Then again, this is a man who thinks that lines such as "The only baggage you can bring/Is all that you can't leave behind" constitute deep thoughts. So maybe it's better just to focus on the music, and take this album as a reminder that while U2 is no longer at the top of its game, it still plays pretty well.

Copyright © 2000 Baltimore Sun. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:50 AM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2000

The Financial Times ATYCLB Review

The Financial Times (London), October 28, 2000

by Ludovic Hunter Tilney

Just over a decade ago U2 reigned as the pomp rockers supreme. They had stirring anthems, earnest lyrics and an ability to fill stadiums world-wide with their fans. Then came a drastic change of image: the Irish quartet, suddenly showing a fondness for leather trousers and wraparound shades, decided to reinvent themselves as an ironic, post-modern pop band. Album titles became increasingly snappy - Achtung Baby, Zooropa and most recently Pop - while voguish DJs were employed to pep up the sound. Playing live, they delivered a virtual symposium on rock music as spectacle - employing such Spinal Tap-like props as a giant lemon.

Despite producing a few good songs, U2 were never terribly convincing in this ultra-chic, self-reflexive mode. And a glance at their ponderously titled new album, All That You Can't Leave Behind, shows that they have chosen to abandon it. Produced by long-term collaborators Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, U2 have stripped their music back to its essentials: guitarist The Edge has had his trademark chiming riffs restored to centre stage, and the emphasis is once more on melody rather than po-mo trickery.

Opening track "Beautiful Day" sets the stage with its muscular bass-line, slashing guitars and Eno-operated synthesisers, all of which signal a return to the epic soundscapes heard on U2's great 1980s albums, The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree. Singer Bono underscores the grandiosity by conflating personal and global perspectives in his lyrics ("See the world in green and blue/ See China right in front of you"), while his yearning voice nicely complements the sweeping tune.

U2 have a great aptitude for this type of bombast, but they have also learnt to temper it with well-judged changes in tone. "Kite" has a lightly countrified edge that sits surprisingly well with Bono's almost operatic excesses ("I'm a man, I'm not a child," the 40-year-old vocalist pointlessly bellows at one stage). And the marvellous "Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of" has an explicitly soulful feel, reprised rather more self-consciously on "In a Little While".

The buzzing guitars and jaunty beats on "Elevation" are the only reminder of U2's experiments in dance-rock fusion during the 1990s, and perversely is also one of the album's best tracks. "Grace", another high point, brings Brian

Eno's influence to the fore: ambient synthesiser chords swish along beautifully to Bono's tenderly expressed lyrics. But the vocalist commits some appalling gaffes elsewhere: "Peace on Earth" is a string of mawkish cliches, (set to equally drippy music), while "New York" ranks as one of the silliest songs of the year. Attempting, remarkably, to imitate both Lou Reed and Frank Sinatra, Bono here delivers a toe-curling series of lyrical banalities.

These aberrations aside, the album finds U2 sounding all the better for quitting their ironic phase. The music is confident and forceful, and if the earnest tone occasionally grates - well, so it did in their heyday too. If the long-threatened 1980s revival kicks off, they may even find themselves becoming fashionable - by default - which really would be ironic.

Copyright © 2000 Financial Times. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:02 AM | Comments (0)

Even For A U2 fan, It's Slow, Flat And Missing The Spark

The Edmonton Journal, October 28, 2000

Even For A U2 fan, It's Slow, Flat And Missing The Spark

By Sandra Sperounes, Journal Music Writer

CD: All That You Can't Leave Behind
Artist: U2
Label: Island/Universal

Sounds like: The morning after an all-night bender Best tracks: Beautiful Day,
Elevation, In A Little While
Rating: ***

Aaaargh! This is undoubtedly the toughest review I've had to write. Having been a huge U2 fan for more than half my life, I want to love All That You Can't Leave Behind. But I can't. Rolling Stone may call it a "masterpiece," but after half a dozen listens, I still find it slow, flat, and missing much of U2's characteristic spark. Even Bono's lyrics, albeit biting and critical, don't seem to make the transition from the printed page to song.

All That You Can't Leave Behind was supposed to be a return to U2's 1987 masterpiece, The Joshua Tree. There are similarities. Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois are back at the helm, and gone are the computerized gimmicks of U2's last two albums. But also gone is the passion and intensity found in such singles as I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, With or Without You, and Where The Streets Have No Name.

There are, of course, a few flashes of brilliance: In A Little While is a soulful number featuring The Edge's slow, burning guitar, while Elevation is a sexy tune.

As for the other nine songs on All That You Can't Leave Behind, they tend to meander along before displaying a hint of former glory: the blazing guitar during the chorus on Beautiful Day, the eerie, barely audible opening of New York, and the momentous final chorus of Walk On: "All that you make/All that you build/All that you break/All that you measure/All that you steal/All this you can leave behind."

Not that we should be calling for U2's retirement just yet. All That You Can't Leave Behind doesn't fail because Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen, Jr. are too old or rich or comfortable. On the contrary, the foursome sound like they really didn't know what they wanted to do with this album. Or maybe Bono was too busy eradicating Third World debt.

Bono and the boys have never been consistent with their recordings. Joshua Tree was followed by Rattle and Hum (1988), a lacklustre, pompous recording. Undaunted, U2 bounced back to release one of the grittiest albums of 1991, Achtung Baby.

Following that pattern, it only makes sense that All That You Can't Leave Behind is disappointing. But it also means U2's next album should be astounding.

Copyright © 2000 Edmonton Journal. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:01 AM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2000

U2's Latest CD Relaxed And Satisfying

The Winnipeg Sun, October 27, 2000

U2's Latest CD Relaxed And Satisfying

by Darryl Sterdan

New U2 albums normally come loaded with as much extra baggage as Zsa Zsa Gabor on safari.

Ever since these Irish post-punk rockers bought into their own hype back in the '80s and started to act like a Very Important Band, they've been obsessed with making Terribly Meaningful Albums filled with Bold Artistic Statements. Like Achtung Baby and Zooropa's use of chilly electronica as a commentary on mass media. Or Pop's reliance on disposable dance music as a pronouncement on consumer culture. Or that giant lemon they emerged from on the PopMart tour, which symbolized ... well, actually, we don't know what the heck that was supposed to mean. We're not even sure Bono could decipher that one. Which makes us wonder: Is all that junk -- the zealous righteousness, the high-concept production, the sheer stultifying gravity of being modern rock's self-appointed conscience -- as tiring to U2 as it is to us?

After hearing their 12th album All That You Can't Leave Behind, something tells us that the answer is yes. And that U2 have finally decided to do something about it. Simply put, they've decided to lighten up. Musically, thematically, emotionally, spiritually, you name it; All That You Can't Leave Behind finds Bono, Edge, Adam and Larry shucking off their messianic mantles, crumpling up the position papers and getting back to where they once belonged -- at the forefront of guitar-based arena rock.

To go with the cover pic of the band toting carryons in an airport, on All That You Can't Leave Behind U2 are travelling light. Recorded in Dublin and France with the aid of longtime running mates Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, these tracks jettison off-putting electronic murk and ironic high-gloss techno for more earnest, soulful sounds. In this era of computer-driven hip-hop, bone-crushing rap-rock and empty-calorie bubble-pop, it's almost quaint to hear musicians playing actual melodies on real instruments.

Leadoff track and single Beautiful Day is typical of the disc's vibe. Edge's scratchy, signature guitar lines jangle and ring above the snappy rattle and hum of bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen. Yes, Eno's swirly synthesizers are plentiful, but mainly as tasteful accompaniment and background atmosphere -- subtly textured backdrops for the band to paint over.

For the most part, U2 steer closer to the earth tones of Joshua Tree than the day-glo tints of Pop. Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of, with its Memphis-soul groove and emotive vocal, could be an old Al Green cover. Similarly, the slippery guitar lines and unadorned melancholy of In a Little While and Grace recall the rainy-night soul of Brook Benton or Otis Redding. In a rootsier vein, there's Wild Honey, a fluidly loping acoustic strummer Wilco wouldn't be ashamed of. And at the rockier end of the scale are the buzzy, funky Britpop of Elevation and the smoky tom-tom thumper New York. Whatever the setting, though, Bono sticks to the unpretentious program. You won't find much of his pointed preaching and philosophizing on religion, war and poverty n these grooves. Instead of acting globally, he's thinking locally, urging us to embrace the joy of a Beautiful Day, offering a simple wish for Peace on Earth, and reminding us repeatedly that to reach a brighter future, we have to leave the darkness of the past behind.

Obviously, it's a message U2 have taken to heart. Natural, unforced, relaxed, organic, free-flowing, sincere and satisfying -- All That You Can't Leave Behind is all that and more.

Copyright © 2000 The Winnipeg Sun. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:33 AM | Comments (0)

Plastic Bono Band Bounces Back

The Times, October 27, 2000

Plastic Bono Band Bounces Back

NEW POP ALBUM: After the hubris of the Pop Mart tour, the public knocked them down. Now U2 have got up again with a zinging tenth album, says Barbara Ellen

It is odd that U2 have garnished their comeback by announcing their manifesto to "save rock", for they have never been your quintessential rock outfit. Even in the beginning, with their debut, Boy, you never quite knew where to put them. It might seem funny now, but, at the time, it was a real head-scratcher for music-loving fifth- formers everywhere -- where, oh where to put U2? Over there with the stadium-rock guys? Over here with the pop people? In the post-punk corner with the "alternative" mob? No, none of those, not really, not exactly -- so where then? For even then, when the U2 "sound" was embryonic and crude, at its most innocent and raw, there was something very complicated and sophisticated going on in the mix. With the following albums, October and War, their uniqueness continued, though not always in an accomplished or lovely way. And so it remained for the longest time. However loved, however "huge" U2 were on a cult level, there was always too much foot-on-monitor hollering and messianic fannying about going on for the general public to feel totally simpatico. Interested, yes (especially where songs like I Will Follow and Shadows and Tall Trees were concerned) but still bemused.

The U2 thing, the thing they had, gelled with The Joshua Tree. Finally, their restless melting of influences, their borderline-hammy imploring and keening, even the defiantly appalling frock coats and poncing about in deserts for photo shoots, made perfect sense. With songs such as With or Without You and Where the Streets Have No Name, U2 had done what many a band had done before them. They had blown the dust off the terrace anthem and given it back to the people. What made it all so special, so exciting and unique, was that, this time, it seemed like the right people.

Bounce forward a fair few years, and we see the release of All That You Can Leave Behind -- the latest U2 waxing, their tenth studio album, and with longtime studio mucker Brian Eno producing, along with Daniel Lanois. It is a heartfelt, emotional, almost quaintly simple affair, which may come as a surprise to those who last saw Bono running amok around the world's stadiums, bellowing fantastical notions about global consumerism and the culture of the logo, all the time slinking about in plastic grope-suits, with a chat show host's grin plastered all over his face. The world called for a doctor: quick, Bono has caught irony. Bono responded by gleefully lying on his back and pretending to be a fly. Oh dear.

While Achtung Baby and Zooropa sowed the seeds of U2's well-intentioned electro-experimental self-destruction, the grandiosity of Pop Mart finished them off good and proper. I caught the Pop Mart show in America. Well, I caught half of it anyway. I chose to leave early, not because I seriously hated the sounds they were making (even at their pretentious worst, U2 have never turned their back on The Tune), but more because I took umbrage at the fact that I couldn't see the band for the stage set.

Which is another way of saying U2 were at a point where they couldn't see the wood for the trees, or indeed their fellow band members for the stage decorations. Whatever was happening, it made me turn away, as did a lot of people. Whatever it was the world wanted or needed from U2, it definitely wasn't rehashed Pink Floyd.

Fortunately, getting your bottom kicked with widescale public derision and sliding sales never did a decent band any real harm, as is now evidenced with All That You Can't Leave Behind. A long time coming, it is the sound of a band not so much going backwards or forwards, but more completing a 360-degree circle of the key stages of their career, as well as the flashpoints of their influences. The opener, Beautiful Day, is all uplifting urban spirituality -- a rock-pop soundscape with a point. It is swiftly followed by the Bob Dylan-melt of Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out, and the buzzing electro-Iggy Elevation. So far so good, and then it gets better, nicer, warmer, but it's hard to put your finger on why.

It sounds good of course -- U2 back to being stylishly precise, and song-based, instead of grimly self-indulgent, and theme-based. And Bono is in fine voice, either when teetering on the edge of a sob with Walk On (dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese opposition leader), contemplating the shifting sands of fashion in Kite, growling about his "midlife crisis" in New York, or wading manfully through Salman Rushdie's mawkish lyrics on The Ground Beneath her Feet (don't give up the day job, Salman). U2 as a unit are still concerned with the "outside world", sometimes to their own creative detriment -- they are indeed guilty of sacrificing melody to oratory in the Troubles-inspired Peace On Earth, and the rather dull When I Look at the World. All is redeemed with In a Little While and Grace, which manage to lick soul alive again.

However, what really stands out about All That You Can't Leave Behind is how resolutely it does not "save rock". How could it when U2 seem so intent on singing and playing their age? Throughout the album, there are recurring themes of mortality and faith, sex and love, mistakes and recriminations, courage and disgrace, questions asked but never answered. It is an album which eschews pop-rock's macho bravado and sentimental certainty for pop-soul's blurred edges and bleeding loose ends, stirring in the odd rock-electro aside to keep things buzzing. So it is that U2, the band who once memorably announced that they still hadn't found what they were looking for, still can't be categorised exactly. Even it would seem by themselves.

Copyright © 2000 The Times. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:26 AM | Comments (0)

The Irish Band's New CD Is A Mellow Return To The Past

The Oregonian (Portland), October 27, 2000

The Irish Band's New CD Is A Mellow Return To The Past

Grade: B+

By Curt Schulz

After 11 albums and 22 years, U2 has just about come full circle.

Having established themselves as the dominant young, politically aware rockers of their era on the first few albums (Boy, October, War), the Dublin-based group went on to celebrate its sturdy position in the charts with the epic sweep and breadth of The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree in the mid-1980s.

The band then became self-consciously fatuous arena rock stars-cum-media icons with Achtung Baby (1991) and Zooropa (1993), then went out of their way to deconstruct and mock their own hard-won imagery and bluster on 1997's admirably snarky Pop. Doing so, the quartet proved they'd developed a deft, McLuhanesque approach to how they're perceived (as megamillionaires who profess a blend of righteousness and liberal politics that verges on the ridiculously stuffy), and that they find the whole construct downright hilarious.

Which brings us up to where U2 is at right now: the New Sincerity.

Mind you, the New Sincerity isn't all that different from their old sincerity, but it's a little older and more centered. If the fresh-faced idealistic and slightly confrontational offerings of their legendary live album, Under a Blood Red Sky, are scant now, what remains is a generosity of spirit and a warmth not heard from the group in some time. It's almost as if they've run out of things to prove.

All That You Can't Leave Behind is being touted as a return to classic form for the Irish band, now well into its third decade with nary a band member substitution. Certainly, parts of the album sound more like U2 than U2 has sounded in ages - it turns out that the one thing the band couldn't leave behind was its own unique approach to making music.

In particular, the lead-off track "Beautiful Day" will be enough to prompt casual eavesdroppers into asking what's spinning in the CD rotation. "Sounds like old U2," they'll say. They'll be correct: The track is a dead-on approximation of the superhero rock the band churned out so expertly in the '80s. All the parts are there and they sound just right, from the slight ringing echo of the guitars to the surging production to singer Bono's playful vocal whoops. They manage to harness an exuberance not heard from the band in ages.

Moving into the diet-soul of "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of," U2 comes to grips with its strengths and limitations nicely. Bono as much as admits it, singing "There's nothing you can't throw at me that I haven't already heard/I'm just trying to find a decent melody/A song that I can sing in my own company."

If it's all downhill from there, at least it's a gradual slope. And let's not forget this group's troughs beat most bands' peaks. If the material is not as strong as during the group's zenith Joshua Tree days - there's no "With or Without You" or "Where the Streets Have No Name" here - there certainly is a wealth of strong songs. These include the unabashed affirmation of "Walk On," the light reggae bop of "In a Little While," the redemptive "Peace on Earth" and an earthy ballad of loss and displacement, "New York."

The production on All That You Can't Leave Behind, by U2 collaborator and ambient pioneer Brian Eno, is so ornately polished it's almost as if you've experienced a violent explosion at the Kiwi factory. After a certain point the whole approach is so slick that you can't quite dig in your fingernails for a full, satisfying ride.

If U2 really wants to get back to basics, a few mild imperfections in the mix would have gone far in helping reclaim the mantle of their classic sound. But it seems petty not to meet them halfway on this one.

Copyright © 2000 Oregonian. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:15 AM | Comments (0)

U2 Can't Leave Itself Behind

The Orange County Register, October 27, 2000

U2 Can't Leave Itself Behind

By Ben Wener

If you've heard that this is U2's mighty return to its past, well, it is.

And that stinks.

Forget the experiments of the '90s ever happened. Erase "Zooropa" and the Passengers stuff from your mind - surely some of you were more than willing to years ago. This is the highly anticipated (right?) album for everyone who thought "Lemon" was lame, who would never dance to "Discotheque," who still doesn't understand what Johnny Cash was doing on a U2 song, who would rather it be "Pride" and "Where the Streets Have No Name" forever and ever, amen.

Guess what? After all that "PopMart" buffoonery, your idols decided to listen to you.

Happy? I'm not.

Forgive me for having high expectations of one of the greatest bands rock has ever seen, but I want more than a grand leap backward - and for the same reason that Springsteen's "Tracks" is still a dumb move and the Stones should stop recording.

There is always room for nostalgia in rock, yes, but it cannot come at the expense of progression.

Yet with the all-too-appropriately titled "All That You Can't Leave Behind" (in stores Tuesday), U2 pulls a creative U-turn, then stalls on the divider of its own arena-rock superhighway. Geez, even the sullen black-and-white photos are back.

I disliked "Pop" because it was the sound of a band that knew it needed to take another bold step forward but didn't know what step to take. I dislike this thing more because it's the sound of a band that knows it needs to take another bold step forward but instead is retreating.

And though my ears like "Elevation" because it reprises "Mysterious Ways" and the lovely acoustic number "Wild Honey" because it's the most laid-back these uptight prophets have been since "Party Girl," that's not enough to sell the whole package.

Yes, U2 fanatic, you're gonna eat this up. You'll think "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" is a kissing cousin of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," even though it's just a bland Philly soul rethinking of it. You'll love "Walk On" because it's got one of those moving all-together-now choruses like "One" and "Bad," even though the phrase "walk on" is nowhere near as powerful as "one love," or "let it go," or even (hear falsetto now) "hoo hoo hoo."

You'll hear a chorus like this: "Who's to say where the wind will take you?/ Who's to know what it is will break you?/ I don't know which way the wind will blow." And you'll think that because Bono's making a metaphor out of the title, "Kite," his lyrics aren't just a cut above high-school poetry.

You'll listen with reverence to the self-explanatory "Peace on Earth" and its sister, "When I Look at This World," thinking the Dublin gang is back to save us all - when actually "Please," the forgotten classic from "Pop," said all they need to about the globe for a while. Sample from "Peace": "Sick of sorrow/ Sick of pain/ Sick of hearing again and again/ That there's gonna be peace on Earth."

Yeah, so are we, Mr. Hewson. So how 'bout saying something more compelling, more inspirational, more intelligent? Do more than moan. We have enough moaners these days.

You've done as much before, you know. Well, of course you know. You know it all too well. Excuse the lengthiness of the following excerpt from a Billboard interview with Bono, but it merits attention. He's talking about "Beautiful Day," which is undeniably a glorious single and not nearly the throwback he makes it out to be.

"We were laying the song down in the studio," he begins, "and the Edge just cut loose a riff that could only be described as classic, early-days U2. It was a sucker-punch - a truly brilliant moment that made everyone's hairs stand on end. But I froze and said, 'Oh, no, we can't use that. It sounds too much like quintessential U2.' "

In that instant, the Billboard writer tells us, the Edge shot a glare from across the room that spoke volumes. "It said, '(expletive deleted), we are U2, and this is how I play guitar.' And I got it. I understood that it was time for us to reclaim who we are."

No, it's not. It's time for them to once again take the impressive tools they've amassed - Bono's weary mope, the Edge's genius riffing, Larry and Adam's pulsating, still-martial beats, all that atmosphere they can't leave behind - and create something we've never heard before. Something that doesn't sound like a lazy follow-up to "The Joshua Tree" and a precursor to the dazzling, decade-old "Achtung Baby."

This, then, serves as a reminder: Bands who think too much about what they were and what they are now make messy, almost bad, albums. U2 is so much better than this. Better than we can imagine. Maybe better than they can, too.

Grade: C+

You might enjoy if you like: "The Joshua Tree" and the most anthemic moments of "The Unforgettable Fire" and "Achtung Baby," especially "One".

Copyright © 2000 Orange County Register. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:15 AM | Comments (0)

Former pop ironists reinvent themselves once again, this time in the cunning guise of a rock'n'roll band

Music365, October 27, 2000

Former pop ironists reinvent themselves once again, this time in the cunning guise of a rock'n'roll band

by Stephen Dowling

The last time we saw U2 it was at the controls of the dance colossus of Pop, the album that spawned the tour that took even their propensity for over-the-top touring into overdrive. But while U2 lovers might have been able to take their heroes' cold, hard industrialism ('Achtung Baby') or their wry, consumer-culture, globalisation-baiting irony ('Zooropa'), they were far from pleased with the world's most stadium of stadium bands embracing the bleep brigade. 'Pop' it seemed, looked like a mid-life crisis from a band who'd seemingly survived all that adversity and 'Rattle 'N' Hum'could throw at them.

So, as the Popmart tour died down, as Radiohead officially became the Best Band Ever, Oasis shuddered and imploded, Fatboy Slim gave the rock/dance crossover a much needed makeover and David Bowie started making good records again, U2 locked themselves in the studio and got back to what it is they do best: Rock'n'roll, with its heart on its sleeve, roaring hope and desperation.

All That You Can't Leave Behind is an album every bit as good as 1991's career-enlivening 'Achtung Baby'. But where the latter shrouded its songs in a hard, post-Cold War industrialism set against the backdrop of a newly-reunified Germany, this new album is characterised by its sheer warmth. With Bono turning to Jubilee 2000 and a hundred other good causes to exercise his political muscles, here he's preoccupied with the search for hope love and happiness, of universal truths in a busy, bustling world.

More than once the lyrics shoot from conveying human emotion to snapshots of the world from space -- "See the world in green and blue/See China right in front of you/See the canyons broken by cloud/See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out" Bono sings in the ambient breathing space in the middle of the glorious 'Beautiful Day' - as if the band are orbiting the Earth, spying on all below. "Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of' floats on a gospel backing vocal that the U2 of 'Rattle 'N' Hum' would have murdered. 'Walk On' meanwhile is their own 'Champagne Supernova' a song that constantly feels like it's going to break out into hysterical guitars at any moment but always manages to stay just the right side of dignified.

Perhaps it's old-fashioned, but U2 have made an album that sounds like U2 again. Only better. It's as if 'Achtung Baby' is being sung round a campfire, drunk on cheap red wine. Occasional deft touches like Larry Mullen's hip hop drum beats on 'In A Little While' are restrained while The Edge's guitar seems reborn, the sudden explosion in the middle of 'New York' breath-taking, as is the scratchy guitar and sonar bleeps at the start of 'Elevation'.

That a band can rack up their twentieth year together and still make a record as effortless as this makes you wonder whether rock'n'roll is dead after all.

Copyright © 2000 Music365. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:12 AM | Comments (0)

The Miami Herald ATYCLB Review

The Miami Herald, October 27, 2000

*** (3 stars out of 5)

U2
All That You Can't Leave Behind
Interscope

By Howard Cohen

A telling title for this return-to-roots CD might be Act of Contrition. Here's a group that soared to the top of the rock heap on the wings of 1987's The Joshua Tree, a spiritual-based and organic (and in retrospect self-important) album. Not long after Joshua Tree, U2 revamped its sound by diluting the guitar and simple songwriting approach in favor of trendy electronics and overly accessorized tours, culminating in the garish Pop Mart Tour three years ago. One admittedly superior album resulted, 1991's Achtung Baby, arguably this hallowed group's high point.

But the title of the new one, All That You Can't Leave Behind, is truth in advertising, too. The four members of U2 are no longer ornamenting and obscuring their past, choosing instead to reinstate classic rock instruments on instantly accessible melodic songs. In some ways, primarily the attention to well-crafted mid-tempo rock material built on straightforward production, Leave Behind recalls early-'70s albums like the Rolling Stones' Goats Head Soup (minus the vulgarity). Song-for-song this is U2's most cohesive collection to date.

This agreeable 11-track set feels effortless. Leader Bono sums it up as early as the second track when he sings, "There's nothing you can throw at me that I haven't already heard / I'm just trying to find a decent melody," on Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of. Catchy melodies abound, none better than the gently insinuating low-key Grace that closes the CD. The swinging acoustic accented Wild Honey, the whisper-and-roar musical motif of New York (Bono in "mid-life crisis") and the CD's single concession to modernity (the hip-hop-electronica spiked Elevation) are good too.

Some debits, though: It's difficult to overlook the strain in Bono's passionate but increasingly frayed voice, and the group's rhythm section, Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton, will never rank as one of rock's tightest. But on All That You Can't Leave Behind, U2's experience shines through the flaws. The music feels timeless.

Copyright © 2000 Miami Herald. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:11 AM | Comments (0)

The Independent ATYCLB Review

The Independent (London), October 27, 2000

by Andy Gill

HAVING SPENT the majority of the past decade searching for ways to rejuvenate the jaded stadium-rock formula - as much for their own benefit as that of their audience - U2, with All That You Can't Leave Behind, seem to have reneged on their courageous experimental tendencies. It's the opposite route to that taken by Radiohead with Kid A: gone are the Krautrock riffs, the left-field disco excursions, the ambient noodlings and the juddering big-beat cataracts; in their place are a dozen songs whose relatively straightforward guitar-rock shapes and readily hummable tunes could easily have come from their Joshua Tree heyday.

Retained as producers, Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno have integrated the latter's synthesiser parts more solidly within the song structures, while emphasising the soul quotient in songs such as "In a Little While" and "Grace". And after the gaudy colours and splashy design of their last three albums, even the monotone cover photo - an Anton Corbijn shot of the band lingering in the cavernous vastness of Charles de Gaulle airport - recalls The Joshua Tree's "classic" style, albeit emphasising the internal rather than the external. In that respect, it's a fairly accurate indication of the album's lyrical contents, which find Bono (and occasionally The Edge) struggling to achieve a satisfying congruence between inner being and the world outside.

As with most spiritual quests, it entails a rejection of materialism, with track after track advocating the discarding of unnecessary baggage: "What you don't have, you don't need it now" ("Beautiful Day"); "You can never get enough of what you don't really need now" ("Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of"); "The only baggage you can bring/ Is all that you can't leave behind" ("All That You Can't Leave Behind"). Like others plunging headlong into midlife crisis, Bono seems most concerned about taking stock and moving on with a lighter load to carry - in view of which, the enthusiastic acknowledgement of "New York" as the siren lure of decadence might best be characterised as the open-topped sports car with which the middle-aged and pony-tailed cling to their fading youth. A similar sense of regretful yearning pervades "Kite", in which Bono sniffs the changes in the air and muses about whether he wasted the opportunities afforded by being "The last of the rock stars... in the time when new media/ Was the big idea".

But for all its ponderings on the past, All That You Can't Leave Behind still sounds like the work of a band committed to the future - and in tracks such as "Wild Honey", "Stuck in a Moment..." and the obvious Christmas single "Peace on Earth", one still capable of writing songs destined to become standards.

Copyright © 2000 The Independent (London). All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:06 AM | Comments (0)

The Guardian ATYCLB Review

The Guardian, October 27, 2000

Time to get the leathers out: Adam Sweeting welcomes U2's return to melodic anthems and rock'n'roll swagger

Prising themselves free from their mid-90s fixations with irony and Las Vegas glitz, U2 have circled back to what they've always done best. That means big tunes, thumping beats and soaring guitars, while Bono pins his heart on his sleeve and sings as if he fears it might be for the last time. This is U2's most accessible and emotional recording since 1991's Achtung Baby. Not that there are many similarities between the two. Where Achtung reeked of trauma and decay, All That You Can't Leave Behind reaches out to a wider world and a brighter future. Where the Achtung songs loomed out of a poisonous industrial murk, the new ones keep the instrumentation simple and the colours refreshingly bright.

Tucked among the production credits, behind hoary old regulars Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, is a startling name: Richard Stannard, erstwhile sonic navigator for East 17 and the Spice Girls. It seems that U2 wanted their message to come over loud and clear, and they're inviting you to join in. From the opening strains of Beautiful Day, this is a disc crammed with songs you can sing in the bath, in a car or, of course, in a football stadium, their ultimate and ill-deserved fate.

It's amusing to recall a remark Bono made during the band's earliest days, when he explained the U2 played exclusively their own compositions because they were too incompetent to play cover versions. Over the years, despite their sometimes oppressive big-rock reputation, they've developed into a bona fide hit factory, and there's an abundance of potential 45s here. Beautiful Day, the first to be released and last week's chart-topper, strikes an appropriate note of putting the past behind you and getting on with the rest of your life ('What you don't have you don't need it now'); it's abetted by a bustling beat, a contagious chorus and vintage guitar chimes from Edge.

Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of is a vast, soulful ballad with all the trimmings (gospel choir, piano, horns, imaginary lighters waving aloft), sung in Bono's finest pulpit-bashing vein. In Walk On, the band lock into a punchy medium tempo while the extrovert vocalist exhorts persons unknown to straighten up and fly right: 'Walk on, walk on, What you've got they can't deny it'. Behind him, an industrial-sized head of steam stokes up and Edge's guitars howl like the backdraft from a low-flying 747. To demonstrate that the mature rock'n'roller can still shake a leg and blow out a few speakers, they've spliced together an irresistible mix of crude techno and raw guitar-swagger in Elevation, the closest to leathers-and-grunge that U2 have come in many a year.

Indeed, after their period of epic bombast, U2 have grasped the value of simplicity. It's easy to imagine the overblown mess they might once have made of Peace on Earth, but here they use its acid lyric about death and suffering (could be Ireland, could be Gaza, could be anywhere) in scathing counterpoint to the tune's Christmas-jingle feel. The truth about less being more is also illustrated with exemplary finesse on In a Little While. Over a simple guitar figure shoved forward in the mix, Bono rasps a confessional lyric about love battered and broken but, he hopes, about to be mended if he can make himself grovel sufficiently. With a couple of smart twists, they convert this into a classic pop moment, while Bono's hoarse and desperate vocal carries the song's meaning more vividly than his words. He brings to the repeating refrain, 'slow down my beating heart', a luminous inner glow.

As the disc winds to a conclusion, it becomes more minimal and less overt. New York is an intriguingly bleak little tale about displacement both geographical and emotional, which wouldn't have sounded out of place on The Unforgettable Fire back in 1984. Grace is a weightless meditation with vaguely Buddhist overtones ('Grace makes beauty out of ugly things') and would have made a far more satisfying conclusion than The Ground Beneath Her Feet (lyric: Salman Rushdie), which has been tacked on exclusively for the album's UK release. More, remember, can be less.

Copyright © 2000 The Guardian. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:04 AM | Comments (0)

U2 Leaves The Present Behind

The Boston Herald, October 27, 2000

U2 Leaves The Present Behind

Longtime fans will find what they're looking for on new CD

by Steve Morse

The sigh of relief you hear is from U2 fans pleased to see the band returning to genuine, heart-driven songs rather than continuing to explore the choppy, techno-obsessed production experiments that have alienated a lot of the faithful in recent years.

Kudos to the Dublin band for its new album, "All That You Can't Leave Behind," which comes out Tuesday. It's a humble work by U2 standards but a proper one, given that the band had to reclaim its emotional, spiritual side rather than drift again into the sometimes tediously cerebral tangents of its trendy 1990s output.

The new album doesn't rock as much as expected or flaunt the provocative, grand political statements for which U2 is known. All it has is great songs that tie together beautifully - a welcome change from the disjointed nature of U2 discs such as 1993's "Zooropa" and 1997's "Pop," which was followed by the oddly satirical "PopMart" tour (arguably the group's last fling in stadiums, since it's planning to switch back to an arena tour in the spring).

The new album finds singer-lyricist Bono returning to his role as spiritual pilgrim. In the softly ambient "Grace," he sings, "Grace - it's the name for a girl/ It's also a thought that changed the world." In "Peace on Earth," he layers the tender antiwar ballad with the verse "Heaven on earth, we need it now ... Jesus, could you take the time to throw a drowning man a line." That leads to a piercing thought about a woman who has lost her son to violence: "No one cries like a mother cries for peace on earth/ She never got to say goodbye, to see the color in his eyes/ Now he's in the dirt."

Bono has said he took much more time on the lyrics, as opposed to a past impulse to dash them off in the studio. The extra care makes for some of the most thoughtful, personal, and tender U2 songs in memory.

This is apparent in "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of," which sounds like John Lennon merged with classic Philly soul. Croons Bono: "There's nothing that you can throw at me that I haven't heard/I'm just trying to find a decent melody/ A song that I can sing in my own company."

The album follows a purported identity crisis within the band, as detailed in a recent Billboard article that reveals U2 wrote nearly 100 songs, spanning every genre. But they pared them down wisely and no identity issues come across on the album.

However, there is a general wistfulness, and a definite taking stock of the new millennium, on a song like "Kite." It has a George Harrison-like slide guitar sound from the Edge, topped by such Bono lines as "You don't need me anymore" and "The last of the rock stars/ When hip-hop drove the big cars/ In the time when new media was the big idea."

It's a reminder that U2 isn't the Next Big Thing anymore, and they know it. But you have to admire the band's self-examination and self-acceptance. They're not trying to be 21 years old as they were on "Pop." Three of the band members - Bono, the Edge, and bassist Adam Clayton - are now 40 years old, while drummer Larry Mullen Jr. is just shy of that.

This is the most adult album the group has made. A number of love songs stand out, among them "Wild Honey" ("You were my shelter and my shade") and the gently bluesy, soulful "In a Little While," about returning home to one's lover: "This hurt will hurt no more/ I'll be home, love/ Slow down my beating heart/ Slowly, slowly, love."

It may seem as if Bono has been reading a little too much early Yeats judging from that line, but the sentiments are heartfelt. The music - limned with additional guitar from co-producer Daniel Lanois - is simply gorgeous.

Regarding this talk of returning to one's home, it should be noted that both Bono and the Edge fathered sons in the last year. The Edge named his son Levi, while Bono opted for the more tongue-twisting Elijah Bob Patricius Guggi Q Hewson (Hewson being Bono's last name).

The songcraft is exceptional, especially if you let the CD grow on you. There's not that immediate rush of some previous albums such as "Joshua Tree" or "Achtung Baby." The new one reveals its strengths more slowly, but persuasively. The return to using producers Lanois and Brian Eno, who worked on vintage discs "Unforgettable Fire" and "Joshua Tree," was a masterstroke. Eno adds some warmly supportive synthesizer lines, though the focus is very much the traditional sound of Bono's yearning vocals, the Edge's psychedelic guitar lines, and the painterly rhythm section of Clayton and Mullen.

The band's famed sense of humor is still evident. On the song "New York," Bono, who just purchased an apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side, talk-sings in a Lou Reed fashion and even jokes about the city: "The Irish have been coming here for years/ Feel like they own the place."

This is an album U2 diehards should truly enjoy.

Copyright © 2000 Globe Newspaper Company. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:54 AM | Comments (0)

The Age

The Age (Australia), October 27, 2000

By Michael Dwyer

Comes a time when a rock band has to choose between acting its age and entering the Peter Pan twilight favored by the Rolling Stones and AC/DC. U2's third decade ditches the zany duds and club-culture conceits as Bono's most personal lyrics bring renewed gravity to the airborne, ringing choruses of their finest work. The album title underscores the self-referential quality of tunes such as Walk On and Kite, which seem to address the band's position as artists and people. Bono admits to his midlife crisis in New York, where the lure of hedonistic adventure is balanced against family life. Musically, there's plenty of reclaimed baggage. The Edge's distinctive, keening jangle returns to light up every other chorus; the r'n'b of Rattle & Hum resurfaces on Stuck in a Moment and the yearning soul of In a Little While; the upbeat Elevation makes sense of the wrong-footed experiment that was 1997's Pop LP. Most importantly, their 10th album finds U2's political heart beating hard, in time with their own. In the devastating Peace on Earth, Bono measures his own childhood against the blast of the Omagh bombing, When I Look at the World gropes for lost innocence, and the minimalist groove of Grace insists, as always, on hope. Far from a cautious stock-take after the misfire of Pop, All That You Can't Leave Behind is U2's first great record since Achtung Baby, nine years ago. But what other band would you trust to pull off the comeback of the century?

Copyright © 2000 The Age. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:49 AM | Comments (0)

October 26, 2000

Heartfelt Songs Of Experience Sung Proudly In Triumph

The Straits Times (Singapore), October 26, 2000

Heartfelt Songs Of Experience Sung Proudly In Triumph

by Yeow Kai Chai

BONO and Gang have ditched postmodernist irony and tinted wraparounds, and stashed away their Pop-Mart fireworks to return to their meat-and-potatoes roots. Okay, maybe not the shades. All That You Can't Leave Behind is a euphoric, no-gimmicks album made by four Dublin rock stalwarts who, in their late 30s and reaching the Big Four-O, are contented, happily-moneyed and can now look back without anger. A heartfelt, relaxed, rock-out affair, it is a no-theme album which flaunts its songs of experience, scabrous wounds and hard-earned triumphs proudly. It is a grizzled Gladiator who just wants to unwind and offer some good ol' stories after years in the battlefield.

Instantly U2-sounding, All That... is rock 'n' roll made new. Meaning it would be embraced wholeheartedly by their throngs of disciples who loved and followed them from their early 1980s days, until they got frightened by their gender-and genre-bending ventures of the 1990s. Even the expensive digital touches by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois are subtle, low-key and stay wisely in the background. U2 is back, at ease with their age, and, as a result, sounding younger in their realisation. When they rock, they kick ass without the funky, tiresome knowingness, but with unadorned ardour. And when they play it soft they are killers.

Check out, for instance, the flagship single Beautiful Day: It's a laid-back, uplifting rocker which sets the mood nicely for the album's breezy, jaunty set. "See the bird with the leaf in her mouth/After the flood all the colours come out," coos Bono in a splendidly earnest croon. Which is why lovely songs such as the flirtatious Wild Honey and the bluesy, Van Morrison-esque In A Little While are more affecting than an epic protest song like Peace On Earth, a song inspired by the Omagh bombing incident, beautiful though it is. This is a U2 not afraid to sound light (but not lightweight), or even simply sentimental. Bless them.

Copyright © 2000 The Straits Times. All rights reserved

Posted by Jonathan at 05:23 AM | Comments (0)

All That U2 Can Bring Along

The Kansas City Star, October 26, 2000

All That U2 Can Bring Along

20-year-old band hasn't found just what it's looking for on new album

by Timothy Finn

Ever a humanist who loves the view from atop a big soapbox, Bono is reportedly making great strides on the international scene these days trying to convince Western governments to forgive big chunks of Third World debt.

But instead of just raging against the machinery, Bono is actually politicking, plying people in high places, including archconservatives like Sen. Jesse Helms, with his endearing rock-star charm.

Keep that in mind as you listen to "All That You Can't Leave Behind," the new U2 record, which sounds an awful lot like the band is making an installment on a debt of its own: another album, its 13th overall, to Island Records.

"You've to get yourself together/You're stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it," Bono sings lukewarmly in one of the many keep-your-chin-up rock ballads on this record, which breaks out of the doldrums only twice: during "Elevation," a groovy rocker with a techno accent, and "Wild Honey," a bouncy chunk of built-for-radio alternative pop. Otherwise, the record surfs rather easily over melodies and beats that never peak too high nor turn too abruptly.

And then there are the lyrics. Famous for asking heavy questions about God, especially the struggle between faith and the flesh, Bono these days sounds like he's tired of wrestling with heavyweights. Or maybe he's just too busy frying bigger fish -- writing movie scripts and doing official Vatican business for the pope -- to care.

On "All That," instead of appraising the half-fullness or -emptiness of the spiritual glass, Bono embraces the glass itself: "It's a beautiful day/Don't let it get away," and "Walk on, walk on/What you've got they can't deny it/Walk on, walk on, stay safe tonight ..."

Elsewhere, he pours several cups of warm milk from his vast supply of human kindness: He prays earnestly to Jesus for some world peace, eulogizes failing romances and disperses advice for those with broken spirits. But most of his poems lack brimstone and bombast, the lyrical excesses that gave his earlier songs resonance. I suspect that if you walked away, walked away today, Bono would care, but he might not bother to follow.

U2 has abandoned nearly all the studio gimmicks it applied so heavily to its previous three albums. Instead, old friends Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite strive foremost for clarity and austerity. Consequently, the Edge's role is profoundly inconspicuous, and the prevailing atmosphere feels familiar and routine, as if everyone followed the rough blueprints to a few earlier albums, especially "The Unforgettable Fire" and "The Joshua Tree."

Whatever the reason, U2, now 20 years old, sounds like it's not quite sure what it's looking for or whether it's in the mood for the hunt. "I'm just trying to find a melody," Bono sings early in the record, "a song I can sing in my own company." Maybe next time.

Copyright © 2000 The Kansas City Star. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:10 AM | Comments (0)

The Daily Yomiuri ATYCLB Review

The Daily Yomiuri, October 26, 2000

U2 is back - not back in the sense that this is the band's first studio album since 1997's Pop, but in the sense that the four Irish lads who gave the world The Joshua Tree are back after a 13-year hiatus. Not since that 1987 masterpiece has Bono sung from on high like he does here, delivering all the glory of U2's best anthems and mining the depths of their more subdued, introspective moments. And it's all done with such stripped-down, well-crafted song writing that the album sounds somehow familiar even on first listen. "I'm just trying to find a decent melody," Bono sings on "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of," "A song I can sing in my own company." U2 have provided several here.

The album opens with "Beautiful Day," a sung-from-the-knees anthem about searching for meaning and hope amid the increasing complexity of modern civilization. Not since "Where the Streets Have No Name" has a song been better suited for singing from the rooftops. From there to the mantra-rap exploration of midlife crisis in "New York," the album runs through the emotional spectrum, all perfectly shaded by vintage Edge on guitars.

A big part of the reason for the album's success is that the Edge has gone back to the inventive guitar sounds that defined the U2 of old. The layered jangle of War, the major-chord swing of "Desire," the minimalist textures of "Bad": all of them are revisited here, but with the matured restraint one would expect of a band that burst onto the scene a full 20 years ago. Bono's voice has surrendered a little off the top over the years, but where it breaks up it does so nicely. He uses this to great effect on tracks like "Walk On," a song about Myanmar activist Aung San Suu Kyi that finds U2 drawing on the political passions that drove so much of their earlier work.

In a word: masterpiece.

Copyright © 2000 The Daily Yomiuri. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:57 AM | Comments (0)

October 25, 2000

A-OK: Bono and Polly Jean Make Peace With Rock's Grand Cliches

Village Voice, October 25-31, 2000

A-OK: Bono and Polly Jean Make Peace With Rock's Grand Cliches

by Eric Weisbard

I've played the Radiohead album about a dozen times, pushed my way in to see them live, and yes, there is a certain pleasure to be had from Kid A. What seems at first like rote, enfeebled antirockism reveals a jittery, cohesive undercurrent. Unlike most electronica, it offers the band feel of instruments set against one another. Hard-learned musicality substitutes for obvious hooks. Thom Yorke's anagrammed vocals may not always track, but his need to extend his voice out over the chasm is never in question. The unintended lesson is this: Wander over to the dark side of the moon and you'll find yourself more deeply reminded of rock's satisfactions than ever.

But there's an even more remarkable side effect that no one's talking about. Once you've taken the Kid A Kool Aid, rerouted your sonic subconscious, albums you had previously dismissed as too dull to deserve another spin start to sound really really good. I mean, you can obsess on intricate dynamics with anything: It's like trying to spot freckles. PJ Harvey's own antirockist detour, Is This Desire?, used to strike me as too quiet and too endless. Now I hear intense, roiling textures-ant farms of miniaturism! U2's Pop may have been the final gasp of the Achtung Baby irony-quest. Suddenly, those disco guitars come off as meaty, and if Radiohead's new "Optimistic" ranks with OK Computer's "Karma Police," "Staring at the Sun" must be as moving as Achtung Baby's "One." What, I shouldn't compare Bono with the finely wrought Yorke? Like that Kid A "sucking on lemons" routine isn't a reference to Zooropa's "Lemon."

Thankfully, the real news of the impending holiday season, for those who prefer their fun fun and their jingle bells rung, is that U2 and Polly Harvey are back among the giving. All That You Can't Leave Behind returns to the grand gestures of old. Practically every song a potential hit single. Soulful, exuberant, at peace with its own clichés, this is one U2 record that will never be called antianything. As for Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, it embraces rock guitar again with the same gulping pleasure with which Harvey is for once embracing her man. And not the thickly clumped postpunk guitar of her early work, necessarily: The ringing riff on the lead track, "Big Exit," reminds me of "Last Train to Clarksville," of all things. Not a lot, maybe, yet even provoking the thought is a breakthrough.

Harvey has faced a dilemma ever since the To Bring You My Love tour, when she unveiled a diva's vocal heft and proved she could coax sounds out of side musicians as pointed as those she'd pick herself. Live, the Howlin' Wolf of her era (however Saville Row her clothes) can turn a nonalbum B-side into "Born to Run" or "Sunday Bloody Sunday," as she did with "Somebody's Down, Somebody's Name" and the unknown "This Wicked Tongue" at a brief CMJ gig at the Bowery Ballroom last Thursday. But on record, the illusion wears off. Placing blame for that is a chicken-and-egg game. Since, unlike U2 and Radiohead, she's never achieved a radio smash or an international following, her urge to grandiosity has gradually come to seem more and more contrived, like the myth-drenched morbid streak she shares with Nick Cave.

Stories From the City offers some sacrificial lambs to the doubters. "The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore" feels like one trip to the wasteland too many, and "Big Exit" starts off sounding so fresh it's a bring-down to hear her revert to character with "I want a pistol/I want a gun." "Kamikaze" has the tug-of-war rhythms of a Rid of Me outtake. Only, c'mon, Rid of Me is one of the best rock albums of all time. If she's fast and loud enough, or finding new ways to shiver my timbers the way a sustained toy-keyboard tone flattens and elevates "A Place Called Home," I don't really care what she's singing.

That's Thom Yorke in focus on the lovers' duet "This Mess We're In," one of several tracks as unproblematically inviting as anything she's ever done. "Good Fortune" shakes like Patti Smith's "Dancing Barefoot" or Hole, with Harvey diddling her vibrato to match. Credit for her loving mood supposedly goes to an extended stay in New York, which in Harvey's romantic haze is all Woody Allen and no Martin Scorsese. "You Said Something" takes a waltzing twirl around moon-drenched rooftops; if it's too easy to call it a U2 song (they do have an even drippier new one called "New York"), how about INXS? Yet Harvey never resorts to overproduction: She goes after this magic moment with the same artfully calibrated intensity she brought to making that other fellow lick her injuries. Then she gushes over anyway, on "This Is Love," both the punkest and the happiest song of the year.

But neither she nor anyone else can match U2 for sustained pleasure this time out. U2 don't rely on projecting bandness anymore the way Radiohead still do, and they've no single genius like Harvey. They're an organization. Four band members, venerable producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno (Radiohead want to explore ambient textures? U2 have the master working their synthesizers!), Steve Lillywhite recalled for some timeless pop gloss. Plus a dozen other techs, and I'd bet Team U2 includes nutritionists and sports therapists too, like Team Navratilova. It ought to be too cumbersome for words, let alone music. Well, long live corporate rock.

All That You Can't Leave Behind begins with "Beautiful Day," a rocker in their oversaturated '90s style but with Edge's guitar sound restored, effective because instead of lingering over gimmickry it just bullies ahead. "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out of" is churchly bliss, Bono testifying over his beloved Philly soul; "Elevation," nothing but shimmy-shammy, big-beat chords and falsetto hoots. "Walk On" is an inspirational message that's never belabored; same for "Kite," which has this looped string bit keeping cool while Bono lets go about "who's to say where the wind will take you." "In a Little While" and "Wild Honey" are calmer, savoring vintage pop-rock like old friends. Though it's downhill from there, with "Peace on Earth" and "New York" too much to take and "When I Look at the World" and "Grace" not quite striking, seven fantastic songs in a row wins my vote.

Call it their R.E.M. album, monster rock filtered through a sophisticate's restraint. Or look back further, to the 1970s vocal Brian Eno albums that preceded his ambient work and surpass it in quality if not influence. Even an outtake from that era, like his "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," combines the futurism and reverence U2 are trading on. It's not that they've regressed, or conceded an error: Keyboards still dominate this mix, Bono still hasn't found what he's looking for, and the zero-gravity sound separations invented for Achtung Baby still keep the genre touches floating. But as with Harvey, who on some level has finally made the Patti Smith album everyone always expected of her (inevitable joke: "Horses in My Dreams"), the lesson is that there's plenty gold left in them there rock-and-roll hills. Veins galore.

That doesn't invalidate Kid A, obviously; it's better than Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile, launched to the same gushing praise last year. But it amazes me how every time some burnt-out rocker goes experimental, the results are accorded automatic deference. And not just from critics: Check through some of the staggering 843 comments to date, many lengthy, that Amazon has received on Kid A-electorate divided, but the majority of the opinion that if Radiohead have another OK Computer stored up for release next spring, well, fine, but Kid A is more important. Really? Never the biggest U2 or arena rock fan, I find all my sympathies with the residue of pop aspiration Bono so righteously titled All That Can't Be Left Behind. It'll be interesting to see how many others do too, whether today's collective lemon sucking passes at the first hint of sweeter fruits.

"You act like you never had love/And you want me to go without," Mr. B once sang, on an overblown number full of generalities that became as much a standard as anything written in the 1990s. It's not a bad thing that rock no longer exerts hegemony. U2 are no longer required to carry themselves as saviors or anti-Christs to make a great album. PJ Harvey needn't travel hell and high water to bring you her love. They just have to remember what turned them on about this stuff in the first place. Can you?

Copyright © 2000 Village Voice. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:30 AM | Comments (0)

U2 Embrace Roots They Can't Leave Behind

Irish Times, October 25, 2000

U2 Embrace Roots They Can't Leave Behind

With their new album, All That You Can't Leave Behind, U2 revisit the big music of their early days. It may be Dadrock, but it's what they do best, writes Kevin Courtney as he goes through the album track by track

Trick or treat? Magic mix or hellish horror? On the eve of Hallowe'en, U2 will release their new album, All That You Can't Leave Behind, and the world will find out if it's a cracker or a damp squib.

It's the band's first studio album since 1997's POP, and in the interim, pop music itself has burst into a million points of light, from the teen glitter of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera to the slinky R&B of Craig Davis and Destiny's Child; from the dross of Westlife to the experimental tilt of Radiohead. U2 have spent the 1990s trying to keep up with pop's changes, but with this new album, the world's biggest rock band have decided to stop running, stand still and savour the oldfashioned smell of leather.

If Radiohead are heading towards the outer edges on Kid A, then U2's new album is going in the opposite direction - back to the rock 'n' roll comforts of home. All That You Can't Leave Behind is U2 getting back to basics. The band's 10th album is heavy with the desert air of The Joshua Tree and Rattle & Hum, but it's also buoyed by a sharp, electric edge, honed by their last three albums, Achtung Baby, Zooropa and POP.

It seems U2 can't leave behind the big music which put them on the cover of Time magazine in 1987, and which swept them into the arms of the US and the whole world. Back then, rock music was a wide open frontier waiting to be explored by generation X, and U2 strode confidently at the vanguard.

By the time they'd made the film and double album, Rattle & Hum, it was apparent that U2 had become corralled into their own musical prairie, so they switched their gaze to the newly-opening frontiers of eastern Europe, added a bit of irony, embraced dance beats, and emerged triumphant with the acclaimed Achtung Baby album and the Zeitgeist-grabbing "Zoo TV" tour.

Zooropa exposed the built-in obsolescence of U2's new creative machinery, and though the POP album had its fine moments, and the "PopMart" tour its fair share of spectacle, there was a feeling that the band's headlong charge towards the seemingly endless horizon had come crashing up against a garishly-painted backdrop.

Radiohead's new album has since proved that there's nowhere left to go in rock, so U2 have probably done the logical thing: they've retraced their steps. The worry is that they may have gone a bit too far back. On their back-tracking trail, U2 have rediscovered some of the things which made them great in the first place. There's a warm, organic vibe emanating from All That You Can't Leave Behind, that natural, bluesy feeling that comes from a band who are clicking on the same mental track.

It takes a certain sense of adventure - and a bit of bravery - to go back over old ground. It is to U2's credit that they've dodged the more obvious pitfalls of the past and come up with a pristine, post-Oasis strain of Dadrock. It's what they do best, and they do it very well here, packing the album with hooks and choruses that - as Bono says in Stuck In A Moment - everyone can sing in their own company.

Bono's voice has never sounded so clear and connected: indeed, the Hewson pipes are probably the album's greatest strength. The Edge's guitar work is once again the stuff of guitar mags, rich in transcribable riffs and solos, but also tinged with subtle technical touches. Larry Mullen's drumming mixes force and finesse with masterly skill, while Adam Clayton's bass blams and slams in all the right places. The artful, understated production of Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno lets all the U2 components breathe freely and naturally.

For the band's hard-core fans, and for soft-rock-loving record-buyers, this is a U2 classic, a safe haven for listeners who have been bombarded with too much techno, drum 'n' bass, ambient electronica, death metal and speed garage - some of it emanating from U2 themselves. This is U2 as we used to remember them, but somehow sounding even more melodic, more aspirational, more comforting.

What's lacking, however, is the sense of danger. After 20 years of swashbuckling and globetrotting, U2 have come home, and All That You Can't Leave Behind is the crackling of the hearth fire: warm, tender, laughing, forgiving, but not very exciting.

1. Beautiful Day

A powerful opening salvo, in which U2 fire off their full sonic arsenal, making you wonder if they've any ammo left for the rest of the album. Unlike previous opening tracks, The Fly and Discotheque, Beautiful Day doesn't try too hard be cool or postmodern, but uses its swirling synths, squalling guitars and splattering drumbreaks to dynamic effect. Modern Dublin becomes a metaphor for the age-old feeling of being mired: "There's no room/No space to rent in this town" and "The traffic is stuck/ And you're not moving anywhere". But hey, pleads the driving chorus: "It's a beautiful day/Don't let it get away." It may be a simplistic smell-the-roses anthem, but it hits the spot.

2. Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of

Wait till Van hears this one. A soul-drenched, mid-tempo rock ballad, it reiterates the previous song's theme of personal logjam. It could be about U2 itself, trapped in their own leviathan hide, unable to get past entrenched preconceptions; or it could be about the debilitating inability to change from within, the soul reliving its own groundhog day. A chiming organ sound, redolent of Moondance, provides the metronomic rhythm for The Edge's sliding, scaling guitar lines. Despite its unwieldy title, the chorus is instantly catchy: sing along to this R&B-flavoured belter, and clear out those blocked pipes.

3. Elevation

Crunchy, buzz-saw guitar riffs, submarine-sonar keyboards and lots of trademark whoo-whoos from Bono. Little hammer-on/pull-off acoustic guitar lines punctuate the chorus as Bono juxtaposes images of excavation and digging with skybound dreams of flight. It's a wrecking balls-out rocker which calls to mind the thundering beat of Bullet The Blue Sky or the taut, electronic twang of Wire. Mooted to be the next single off the album.

4. Walk On

And - presumably - you'll never walk alone. Once again, Bono reaches out his hand to help someone whose feet have become stuck to the ground (could even be his own self). Walk On is a typically U2-ish anthem, unashamedly passionate and un ironically old-fashioned; the album's title can be heard in the lyrics. The song sets out tentatively, tottering on a three-chord piano signature, before finding its balance and setting out bravely towards home. Home, in Bono's lateral, lyrical view, is "a place that has to be believed to be seen". The song fades with a Dark Side Of The Moon-style outro: "All that you fashion/All that you make/All that you build/All that you break".

5. Kite

Another old-school U2 anthem, this one tackles personal issues close to Bono's own home. Family loyalties are set against the temptations of rock stardom, with Bono caught between two hearts and a rock place. A breathy synth motif sets the tone, while The Edge's layered guitar keeps the song aloft on Bono's mosaic-cracked vocals. Sadly, Kite gets blown around by blustery production and woolly wordplay, finally disappearing into a fluffy cloud of nebulous ideas.

6. In A Little While

The Edge's breezy, bluesy guitar drives this soul-flavoured tune along. You can just picture Bono sitting on the dock of the bay, thinking home thoughts from a boardwalk. Earthy lyrics about a "girl with Spanish eyes" give way to star-gazing sentiments: "Man dreams one day to fly/And man takes a rocket-ship into the skies." It's a man's, man's, man's world, Bono seems to be saying, but it wouldn't be nuthin' without 'er indoors. Not one of the strongest tunes on the album.

7. Wild Honey

Stuck in the middle with U2. This weak, watery, West Coast ditty trundles along on strident acoustic guitars, and goes right off the cliff in a convertible. "I was a monkey/Stealing honey from a swarm of bees," reveals Bono, getting himself mired in a primeval swamp of metaphors. It's the album's low point, where the band's stripped-down approach threatens to reach total vacuity.

8. Peace On Earth

The album's "deep" song finds Bono once again addressing the ills of the world, only this time he's not offering easy slogans or pop-tastic platitudes. Written immediately after the Omagh bombing, Peace On Earth is a song of shaken faith: "I'm sick of the sorrow/ I'm sick of the pain/I'm sick of hearing again and again/That there's gonna be peace on earth."

As he sings a roll-call of some of the Omagh dead, it's clear that Bono's lofty pronouncements of old have been levelled by the reality of human suffering: "Their lives are bigger than any big idea." The music is muted, giving the platform to Bono's lyrics, although bells ring throughout the reference to John Lennon's song, Happy Christmas (War Is Over): "The words are sticking in my throat/Hear it every Christmas time/But hope and history don't rhyme." Peace On Earth would certainly make a powerful Christmas anthem; let's hope U2 don't succumb to the temptation, because by next year it may sound as shallow as Simple Minds's Belfast Child.

9. When I Look At The World

A discordant guitar strum counts into a plinking keyboard motif, as Adam Clayton's trundling bass and The Edge's stabbing guitars punctuate Bono's searchlight lines. It's the global brought back to a personal level, as Bono tries but fails to see the world through the eyes of another (try taking off those fly shades, Bono).

10. New York

On POP, it was a paean to Miami; this time, it's NY that gets the eulogy. While Bono sings about the city that never sleeps, The Edge recreates disjointed, insomniac feelings with some wobbly, flanged guitar licks. Echoes of Lou Reed and Frank Sinatra swish through the rumbling synthesisers and low-slung vocals, as Bono sings lines such as: "In New York I lost it all/To you and your vices/Still I'm staying on to figure out/My midlife crisis." Could be somewhat autobiographical.

11. Grace

A bassy organ and a lazy guitar lick set the tone for this slow, serene ode to the girl with redemption in her eyes. Eno's signature synth sound flits in and out of the shadows, adding that airy, ambient touch which gave With Or Without You its resonance.

12. The Ground Beneath Her Feet

U2 have decided to rescue this Salman Rushdie-inspired song from the soundtrack of The Million Dollar Hotel, where it was in danger of dying of neglect. It may have been the best tune on the soundtrack, but here it's not much more than a filler.

U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind is released on Monday, October 30th, on the Island label.

Copyright © 2000 Irish Times. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:08 AM | Comments (0)

September 30, 2000

Track By Track - U2's "All That You Can't Leave Behind"

Billboard, September 30, 2000

Track By Track - U2's "All That You Can't Leave Behind"

Below is a track by track description of U2's 10th album, "All That You Can't Leave Behind," due Oct. 31 in the U.S. on Interscope. Songwriters are listed in parentheses.

"Beautiful Day" (U2, Bono). The project's lead single, "Beautiful Day" is an instantly recognizable, immediately memorable U2 rocker -- replete with a big, booming chorus, lushly layered harmonies, and ringing guitar riffs. Lyrically, Bono says the song is about "a person who loses everything and has never been happier. It's a song about taking stock of the important things in life."

"Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of" (U2, Bono, the Edge). A sweet, understated rock ballad that deftly explores the angst and ultimate emotional rescue from depression and sadness. Bono glides into a smooth, gospel-inflected falsetto during the bridge, adding a retro-soul flavor to the tune. "We wanted it to have a real Philly type of flow to it," Bono says. "Musically, it has that shuffle-in-the-street sound that feels so great and old-fashioned in the best possible way."

"Elevation" (U2, Bono). An acidic kicker that's mildly reminiscent of the tripped-out tone of earlier albums "Pop" and "Achtung Baby," in that it deftly intermingles forceful rock elements with jittery hip-hop-derived beats and a swirl of distorted guitar/keyboard lines.

"Walk On" (U2, Bono). A classic U2 love song, featuring meticulous, clanging guitar-work from the Edge and yearning, worldly words of love by Bono. Lines like "A singing bird in an open cage / Who will only fly for freedom," as well as the tune's arena-friendly chorus, render it a natural single contender. "It's one of the songs that people seem to have an instantly positive response to," Bono says. "It's going to be a lot of fun to play live."

"Kite" (U2, Bono). An orchestral opening flourish segues into a languid rock-ballad arrngement, leaving ample room for Bono to deliver one of the more impassioned vocals heard on the album. The Edge punctuates the track with deliciously intricate lead guitar riffs, while Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen underscore the track with taut, insinuating rhythms that provide motion without overpowering the innate intimacy of the song.

"In A Little While" (U2, Bono). The club-savvy team of Richard Stannard and Julian Gallagher makes a post-production cameo on this notably low-key, pop-splashed gem. Bono wails with ample soul, while Stannard and Gallagher put their natural rhythmic intuition to fine use.

"Wild Honey" (U2, Bono). A pleasantly simple, acoustic-framed pop strummer on which Bono is at his most earthy and romantic.

"Peace On Earth" (U2, Bono). This track is a firm reminder that few bands can get as intensely philosophical and political in their music as U2 does without coming off hammer-handed. Rather, this epic composition succeeds in examining the woes of the world within a structure that also includes a firm, insinuating melody and an infectious hook. A beautiful, heartfelt song that effectively references Sophocles' "The Cure At Troy" as translated by Seamus Heaney.

"When I Look At The World" (U2, Bono, the Edge). A perfect companion to "Peace On Earth," as the band launches into a rumbling, militaristic beat that is fondly reminiscent of its 1984 anthem "Pride (In The Name of Love)." In the end, however, this tune doesn't have the same white-knuckled attack. Instead, this song (one of several on which the Edge contributes lyrics) simmers, relying more on a quietly guttural power than heady screams and proclamations.

"New York" (U2, Bono). An undeniable love letter to one of the world's most famous cities, penned from the wide-eyed perspective of a European seeking the so-called promised land. Encased in a slow-building rock framework, "New York" is a clever, often amusing ditty that tempers its ardor with a fair amount of realism.

"Grace" (U2, Bono). A soft, subtle closer that nicely counters the sonic blast coursing through much of the set. Everything about this song is intimate and quietly emotional, as Bono cleverly intermingles vivid metaphoric images of a woman named Grace shouldering the weight of the world with sharp lyrical images of grace as a state of being.

Copyright © 2000 Billboard. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:53 AM | Comments (0)

March 04, 1999

Bono enlivens Dylan's House of Blues show

3.4.99 - Las Vegas Review-Journal

By Mike Weatherford

At first, Bob Dylan seems an unlikely party host. He's a legendary songwriter, but a relatively detached performer to be leading the opening night throw-down that launched the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay on Tuesday. The biggest indication that Dylan was relaxed and having a good time -- or even aware that he was playing in front of an audience -- was an occasional smile or arched eyebrow toward the crowd down front during his guitar solos. It took U2's Bono to provide that memorable moment you'd hope for on a hotel's big opening night, one where Dan Aykroyd hovered around the downstairs bar and Quentin Tarantino and Rob Schneider briefly waited in line out front before bolting for an exit door that apparently led them to the VIP area of the club. Emerging for a "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" encore, Bono not only harmonized with the legend, but customized the lyrics with lines like, "Happy birthday baby you're a star, Bob Dylan has gone too far." By letting the music speak for itself, however, Dylan offered as good a mission statement as any for the new club. The horseshoe layout really pulls everyone in close to the stage; though the concert was sold out, a good number of the reserved seats upstairs were left empty by those who apparently preferred to be on the floor. And the sound surrounded the crowd on the floor with speakers rimming the edge of the balcony. The separation of instruments made it a great way to hear the four-piece band's intricate, acoustic jamming on tunes such as "It Ain't Me, Babe." Dylan loaded the 80-minute set with favorites, disappointing only those who expected him to give the band a break and play harmonica or perform a solo acoustic song. He got no closer than a pumped-up acoustic stretch that included "To Ramona" and "Tangled Up in Blue," with stand-up bass and longtime sideman Bucky Baxter on mandolin. A rollicking "Silvio" and "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" set a tone of restrained-yet-busy arrangements that fell somewhere between the singer's folkie days and his 1992 date at Bally's, when a five-piece band steamrolled through all the lyrics in a blur. Perhaps it was reading too much into it to think that Dylan would goof on his own stereotype, but during "Just Like a Woman," he seemed to switch back and forth between his "straight" singing voice and the nasal, drawn-out silly one that people like to imitate. The biggest surprise -- next to Bono showing up -- was Dylan's cover of "Friend of the Devil," a fitting Grateful Dead tune with its line about getting home before daylight. That wouldn't happen before the Grateful Dead tone resonated again in a "Not Fade Away" encore. The song has become a sort of anthem for elder rockers. But it was a new one -- the reggae-bouncing "Can't Wait" -- that suggested the man introduced simply as "Columbia recording artist Bob Dylan" is still working in the present tense, and has yet to close the cover on his amazing songbook.

REVIEW What: Bob Dylan When: Tuesday Where: House of Blues Rating: three stars Attendance: 1,800

Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Posted by Jonathan at 05:45 AM | Comments (0)

March 06, 1998

Pop Mart is over the top

Tokyo Popmart concert, March 6, 1998

From the Daily Yomiuri newspaper

Pop Mart is over the top

By Morris Cooper, Special to The Daily Yomiuri

The veteran Irish band U2 has tried very hard recently to make serious music--while not appearing to take itself too seriously. Two examples are their latest album, Pop, released last year, and the Pop Mart Tour, which has kept them traversing the globe for the past six months.

With Pop, U2 incorporates the up-to-date sounds of techno beats and loops into its music, giving the songs, which have always been about searching for love, peace and the meaning of life in a troubled world, a fresh and sometimes even danceable sound. Pop can be seen as U2's attempt to acquire a late 1990s relevance. Most of the time, it works.

The Pop Mart Tour, on the other hand, which stopped at Tokyo Dome last Thursday, is a gigantic convenience store that sells just one product: U2, live and in your face. Pop Mart is U2's effort to send up the rock band as commodity, using an oversized, circus-like stage show that enables everyone in the house to feel like they are part of the action.

The visitor to Pop Mart was instantly confronted with the stage, which took up most of center field and was dominated by a giant "golden arch" (apparently lifted from a well-known hamburger chain) that stretched from one side of the stage to the other. The stage was framed in bright colors: yellow, pink and orange, with a yellow backdrop the size of a football field containing the words "Pop Mart." From the back of the Dome, the guitars, amplifiers, microphones and a drum set appeared as tiny dots amid this gigantic landscape.

Most rock concerts begin with a set formula: House lights go dark, band takes the stage, stage lights go on, band begins to play. At Pop Mart, convention was subverted. The house lights went dark and the stage began to play. First came a jacked-up version of bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr.'s theme from the film Mission: Impossible. Next, the entire back of the stage became a huge video screen and light show extravaganza. Picture the biggest video screen you could ever imagine, and then double it, and you may be able to approximate the size of the screen that U2 brought with them to Tokyo.

Again dispensing with rock band tradition, U2 made a grand entrance through the middle of the crowd, making their way to the stage like a boxer and his entourage heading into the ring. All of this was on the screen behind the stage, so that it was possible to feel like you were right there with the band as they wove through the crowd. Bono, the lead singer, even wore a hooded purple robe. At this point, one could legitimately ask the question: Is Pop Mart a concert, or an elaborate pay-per-view event? And the answer would be, a little bit of both.

The band launched right into "MoFo," one of the techno-inspired dance tracks from Pop, and followed that up with one of their first hits from the early 1980s, "I Will Follow." With this opening flurry, the band simultaneously acknowledged its deep roots and demonstrated that it can play the psychedelic techno game as well as any underground rave crew.

This balance between new and old was the pattern throughout the evening; from new songs from Pop such as "Gone," "Last Night On Earth," "Please," "Staring At The Sun" and "Discotheque," interspersed with classics from the U2 repertoire, including "New Year's Day," "Pride" and "Bad." However, despite the fact there was a real, live, super-famous band of rock stars right there on stage playing many of their greatest hits, most of the people in the nearly full arena focused intently on the video screen images.

Besides U2, who throughout the show played to the cameras, Pop Mart imagery included graphics of the evolution of man, with the most evolved stage being man with a shopping cart. There was also an animated cartoon of a person in a convenience store; another cartoon showing fighter planes; a space ship; and pop culture icons like Marilyn Monroe, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley.

While U2 is a band with four members, singer Bono (with crew cut and orange sunglasses), and guitarist The Edge (sporting muttonchops and a ten-gallon hat--was he one of the Village People?) got the most screen time. Clayton and Mullen, who are without a doubt essential to the musical mix, were only an occasional diversion in the large-scale visual essence of Pop Mart. Bono clearly understands the power of the image, and the camera angles are designed accordingly to achieve maximum impact. In "Bullet the Blue Sky," as he sang about the impact of U.S. military forces on Third World countries, he spun an umbrella designed in the stars-and-stripes motif of the U.S. flag directly at the camera, until this red, white and blue image filled the entire screen.

And later, during "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," Bono and The Edge stood at either side of the stage, hundreds of meters away from each other, while appearing as if they were side by side on the video screen. U2 became probably the world's first virtual band.

With Pop Mart, U2 spared no expense in blurring the distinction between a real rock band and the image of a rock band, an effective way to reach out to the audience in such a large arena. But despite the visually stunning and crowd-pleasing bombast that made up most of the performance, the highlight of the show was when it was at its most stripped down.

Guitarist The Edge, who is better known for the echo-driven guitar style that forms the basis for the U2 sound than for his singing, stood alone on a small stage set into the middle of the crowd, and accompanied himself as he sang "Sunday Bloody Sunday," a song the band rarely performs live. No video screen, no images and no techno beats. Just a guy with an angelic voice, a guitar and a powerful song to sing.

Despite the massive effort to appear as if they are trivializing themselves with Pop Mart, U2 is still a band with a soul.

Copyright © 1998. Daily Yomiuri. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:43 AM | Comments (0)

September 26, 1997

Bono In Conversation

Post-Sarajevo Popmart concert, September 26, 1997

Bono In Conversation
by Andrew Mueller, the Independent

U2 in Sarajevo: Part 1 - The Stage is Set

What politicians and diplomats have failed to do for years, rock music might well accomplish Tuesday: end the division of Bosnia, at least for a few hours.

Fans from all over the bitterly divided country flocked to Sarajevo to hear the Irish rock band U2 in concert - the biggest spectacle the city has seen since the 1984 Winter Olympics.

The concert in the Kosevo Olympic stadium - rebuilt last year after suffering heavy damage during the 3 1/2-year war - has, in its own way, accomplished miracles.

About 45,000 people were expected to pack the stadium for Tuesday night's concert, which fulfills a pledge made by U2's lead singer Bono when he spent the first postwar New Year's Eve with Sarajevans in December 1995, weeks after the war ended.

For the first time since the start of the war in 1992, people more accustomed to seeing each other through the sights of a rifle were converging on the capital to listen to music together. It was a reminder of prewar Sarajevo, home to some of old Yugoslavia's best rock bands.

About 500 fans even came from the Bosnian Serb republic, and trains ran between the north and south of the country for the first time since the war-shattered railway network was repaired last year.

In Serb territory, tickets were available through international civilian organizations working to bring peace. In some places, U2 concert posters were pasted over pictures of Radovan Karadzic, the indicted wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs.

Even the NATO-led peace force lent a hand to Tuesday's concert, helping to check the stadium for bombs.

Concert revenues - $18 a ticket on average - were being donated to a hospital reconstruction fund in Sarajevo.

During the war, U2 dedicated a song, Miss Sarajevo, to the city's suffering. On his ZOO TV tour in 1993-94, Bono established a direct link with Sarajevo - bringing a glimmer of the outside world to a city that endured 3 1/2 years of siege, shelling and sniping by the Serbs.

Bosnians never forgot it. "Welcome U2," the main daily Oslobodjenje proclaimed on its front page Tuesday.

"I felt excluded from the world for so long," said Azra Smailkadic, 18, who arrived Tuesday from Travnik in central Bosnia dressed in layers of sweaters and jackets. "It's not only about U2. It's the feeling of being part of the world again."

"The city is full of young people with backpacks," said her best friend, Amela Leko. "Everybody is here expecting something nice to happen for a change."

Although the railway from Sarajevo to the south and to the north was fixed by foreign donors last year, trains never ran until Tuesday, because Muslim and Croat politicians could not agree who would operate the railway within the Federation they share.

But U2's concert made them overcome the dispute for a day. Special trains from Maglaj to the north and Mostar to the south brought in fans Tuesday and were to take them back Wednesday morning. After that, the trains will be idle again.

The Muslim member of the Bosnian presidency, Alija Izetbegovic, is expected to be among the many political notables in the audience.

And at U2's request, the warm-up act was distinctly Sarajevan - the chorus of the city's Gazi-Husruf Beg Islamic high school singing two Islamic spiritual songs, Ilahije and Kaside.

U2 in Sarajevo: Part 2 - The Rattle and Hum

The hills around Sarajevo that once echoed to the rumble of artillery reverberated on Tuesday to the joyful singing of tens of thousands of people at a concert staged by Irish rock group U2.

It was the city's first major pop concert, and the first sign of normality, since the end of the Bosnian war in 1995.

The atmosphere was already electric after local support bands had played, but when U2 lead singer Bono lost his voice early in the concert the crowd went wild, helping him along with their joy, he told Reuters in an interview.

``So far I'm so bewildered that they didn't throw rocks at me when I couldn't sing for them. I just want to carry these people's luggage for the rest of my life,'' he said.

``It was one of the toughest and one of the sweetest nights of my life, that's for sure.''

Bono told the packed Kosevo stadium that "To play in Sarajevo is a gift from you to us"

``Forget the past, live the future, viva Sarajevo!'' he shouted to applause and cheers.

Memories of the war were not far away though. Film footage on a giant 100-fott high screen behind the band showed a beauty contest in the city in 1993 when contestants held a banner which read, ``Do not let them kill us.''

U2 treated the crowd to their first live performance of ``Miss Sarajevo,'' a song recorded with Italian opera singer Luciano Pavarotti to help a children's charity.

``My voice is gone but your voices are strong and I ask you to carry me like you carried each other in those weeks, months and years,'' Bono told the crowd, who waved, whistled and cried.

U2 were the first major rock group to play in Bosnia since the war ended, and the first real sign Sarajevo could return to normal. ``To the city of the future,'' Bono said.

Ticket prices were kept low for the 50,000 people who filled the stadium, including two stands of NATO peacekeping soldiers in uniform.

``We thought we'd play just a small scratch gig as a benefit concert but they didn't want a benefit concert...they wanted the 40-foot lemon, they wanted the drive-in movie screen, they wanted the whole shebang,'' Bono said.

``I think they wanted, more than anything, a return to normalcy. That's what these peple want, it's what they deserve. They don't need any kind of patronising from people like me.''

Thousands of young people flocked to the concert from all over Bosnia and other former Yugoslav republics. The first trains to arrive in Sarajevo since the war came from Mostar and Maglaj. Slovenian visas were not required for the day.

Special buses brought fans from Zagreb, Ljubljana and even Bosnia's Serb Republic -- a rare journey across the ethnic boundary line into the Moslem-Croat Federation.

``We worked quite hard to make sure tickets were available in Croatia and even from Republika Srpska we had about 1,000 people came down today which is great,'' Bono said.

``We tried our best to make it as multi-ethnic as Sarajevo was, and will be again.

``There was a lot of joy in the house and joy is the hardest thing. Our music is tough and it's raw in places but I think it has joy also and it had more joy tonight than ever before.''

As he croaked through the interview with a voice about to give up, the thrill of finally being in Sarajevo after years of planning was obvious. ``Tonight wasn't ordinary, it depended on magic...I will always remember this night for lots of reasons.''

The Setlist:
Pop Muzik Intro
Mofo
I will follow
Gone
Even Better than the Real
Thing Last Night On Earth
Until the End of the World
New Year's Day
Pride(In the Name of Love)
Still Haven't Found.. / Stand By Me
All I want is You
Staring At the Sun
Sunday Bloody Sunday (Acoustic, Edge Vocals)
Bullet the Blue Sky
Please
Where the Streets Have No Name

Encore 1:
Lemon Intro
Discotheque
If You Wear that Velvet Dress
With Or Without You
Miss Sarajevo

Encore 2:
HMTMKMKM
Mysterious Ways
One
Everlasting Love

U2 in Sarajevo: Part Three - The Morning After

"It wasn't quote what I'd planned," relflects Bono, when I meet him in his hotel suite the following morning.

"I'd planned to be in fine voice. I have been in fine voice, of late, though I'd probably have been a terrible pain in the arse if I had actually pulled it off!"

"But maybe," he continues, "that allowed room for Sarajevo to take the gig away from us. Tey could see that things could go horribly wrong, they'd gone to a lot of trouble to come here, and they were just going to make it happen. And they did. The original idea was that we'd flash bastard it into town and play a rock n'roll show. You know, don't patronise these people, just do it. I was gonna give them the full whack. I jst wasn't able to. But it dwarfed PopMart. That's what I thought was interesting. Something else went on, something that I, as an outsider in the city, probably couldn't understand."

Bono is no less famous in Bosnia than anywhere else, but even he must have ben bewildered by his reception yesterday. After U2 touched down at Sarajevo's battered airport, they were whisked under police escort to a meeting with Bosnia's president, Alija Izetbegovic. Bono gave him a W B Yeats first edition.

"We talked," says Bono, "about Sarajevo as an interface between east and west, between Islam and Christianity. I think that's why Sarajevo is a city of the future, because that axis is important. I also think Sarajevo is imortant as a symbol of tolerance."

A few weeks ago, U2 played Belfast for the first time in years.

"There was a similar feeling, yeah," he says, "And I think as far as Belfast is concerned, the leaders of the various parties there might enjoy a visit to this country, to see what results if they can't resolve their problems peacefully. This is what happens. Here it is."

Copyright © 1997 The Independent. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:42 AM | Comments (0)

September 23, 1997

Smiles Over Sarajevo

Sarajevo Popmart concert, September 23, 1997

Smiles Over Sarajevo

From The Independent (Britain)

(U2 held their historic gig in the Bosnian capital and although Bono's voice gave out, Andrew Meuller witnessed a set which lit up the city).

There probably hasn't been as strange a cast of characters at a backstage party since the reign of Caligula. It is not often, as you elbow your way to the free drinks after a concert, that you find yourself standing next to the Irish Minister for Defence or tripping over cables trailing behind a CNN crew, or sharing a couch with the Bosnian ambassador to the United Nations.

By this point of the night, however, any previous conceptions of what constituted weirdness have been well and truly run through the shredder. We live in an age in which rock n'roll gigs are routinely described as history in the making. These stakes on posterity are at best silly and at worst mendacious, as if a few thousand people standing in a paddock, or a group of middle-aged bores deciding to speak to each other again are events comparable to moon landings. Tonight, its happened for real.

As Faris, the drummer with the local support act, Sikter put it: "It's one of the most important things that's ever happened here. The railway has opened today, after four years, just for this. It's like when the Winter Olympics were held here, in 1984. But it's bigger than that, even. Look, my father made me some new shoes, just for tonight."

Faris smiles. There's been a lot of that this evening, a night which has been four years in the planning. In 1993, U2 were on the road in Europe when their Zoo TV tour. At a concert in Italy, a film crew from Sarajevo presented themselves. After being granted the interview they'd come for, the crew explained to the band something of what was then being done to their city by the Bosnian Serb Army. U2's response was to suggest that they go and play there. The band were persuaded that, as things stood, that wasn't practical - aside from the fact that such a trip would have induced spectacular apoplexy in U2's insurers, the crowd such a show would have attracted would doubtless have been all too tempting a target for snipers and gunners who had already demonstrated that they considered marketplaces, water queues and funerals to be fair game. The idea was shelved.

The compromise arrived at was the satellite link with Sarajevo, which saw part of each night's Zoo TV multi-media overload being devoted to the beseiged city. A young American aid worker called Bill carter, then working in Sarajevo for London-based organisation, The Serious Road Trip, operated a hook-up, enabling various citizens to speak, live, to whichever audience U2 were playing to at the time. Memorably, during a show at Wembley Stadium, one young woman scoffed via satellite that "Nobody cares. You're going to let us die. Why not let them get it over with?"

Back in Sarajevo, Bill Carter had been aiming his camera away from the headlines. His acclaimed documentary, `Miss Sarajevo,' recording a beauty contest heald during the war, inspired a song of the same name by Passengers, a group consisting of U2, long-time producer and mentor Brian Eno and, for that one song, Luciano Pavarotti. Bono finally made it to Sarajevo at the end of 1995, three months after NATO's bombers had put an overdue stop to the city's misery. He sang at impromptu sessions in a few bars, put in several hours being deafened by local groups in snad-bagged rehearsal spaces, said he'd be back, and that next time, he'd bring the band.

And that he did as part of the current world tour, PopMart. He brought with him the most complicated and expensive live rock show ever assembled. PopMart employs 250 people, costs around #160,000 a day to run, and requires 55 trucks and a Boeing 727 to carry it. When I heard, earlier this year, that U2 were definitely going to play Sarajevo, I assumed they'd be taking the bare minimum equipment. When I heard they intended to take the whole show, I assumed they'd been out in the sun without hats on.

In July 1996, I covered the first post-war visit to Sarajevo by a British band. Newcastle punk trio, China Drum travelled a good deal lighter than U2. All their gear, crew and me, just about fit into one van. They did two shows at one small club. The trip was a logistical and administrative nightmare.

We were turned over by Croatian customs, run off the road by a deranged woman who then abused us for trying to hurt her baby, pestered by a rogue Bosnian Serb Army checkpoint, menaced with a pistol by a clearly insane Bosnian policeman, refused entry to Slovenia, and if it hadn't been for thebottomless kindness of the Queen's Lancashires British Army regiment, we would probably still be camped in our broken-down truck, somewhere near Vitez, drawing lots to see which of use we ate next. It could be said that Bosnia doesn't really have an infrastructure for dealing with touring rock groups, especially if you were trying to win some sort of award for understatement.

"We thought it was going to be difficult," agrees Paul McGuinness, U2's long-sewrving manager, speaking after the show. "But it's been quite straightforward. People have just wanted to help. We've blagged a lot of equipment, forklifts and son on, from the military, and the local crew have been incredibly enthusiastic. There was talk of just doing a scratch show, but we felt it was important that we treat this as another city on the tour, to pay them that respect. To come here and not do the whole show would have been rude."

McGuinness cheerfully confirms that U2 will lose a tidy fortune on the gig recognising Sarajevo's post-war poverty, tickets were sold cheaply - by McGuiness's estimation, the last time it cost that little to see U2 was around 1983 - and whatever surplus wa realised from sales of the concert to radio stations around the world wa earmarked for the coffers of the War Child charity. Crucially, tickets were also sold in the Serbian and Croatian areas of Bosnia-Hercegovina, as well as in Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade. Sarajevan friends had been telling me all day of their happiness that the night before the show, Sarajevo's bars had been full of people from all over what was once Yugoslavia and there'd been no trouble - although, the next day in town, I see one local knock on a window of a car with Belgrade license plates and scream uncomfortable obscenities at the occupant.

Inside the 45,000-capacity Kosevo Stadium, as showtime nears, no such bad vibes are evident. Even the stands containing the khaki ranks of troops serving with the multi-national stabilisation force (SFOR) are getting in on the act - the Spanish contingent have tied their national flag in bandannas around their heads and are crowd surfing among themselves. They also try to institute a Mexican wave among the foreign troops but, in a neat metaphor for the western military presence during Bosnia's war, this collapses amid confused signalling and lack of communication.

The first two acts on stage are a local choir and local rock group, Protest, one of the better acts to have emerged from Sarajevo's startingly vibrant wartime rock n'roll scene. Sikter, who follow them, start by tearing up the Bosnian national anthem i the style of Hendrix's `Star Spangled Banner,' - an astute populist touch that properly kickstarts the evening.

U2's show is perhaps not everything it could have been, as Bono's voice gives out on him about six songs in and he struggles with high notes after that. It doesn't really matter, of course. What's important tonight is that one of the biggest bands in the world is here, that their set lit up when it was plugged in, and that, with the exception of a few entirely forgiveable yelps of "Viva Sarajevo!," there's no hint of self-congratulation up on the stage. The only moments tailored to the evening are Edge's lovely solo rendering of `Sunday Bloody Sunday,' and the first tentative live performance of `Miss Sarajevo,' for which the band are joined onstage by Brian Eno and on tape by Pavarotti. "We wrote that song for you," laughs Bono, as it closes, "and we can't fucking play it!" This, like everything else, gets a huge and heartfelt roar.

There's anothing touching moment as the lights come up. Led by the Spanish, the SFOR troops rise and applaud the crowd, the people of Sarajevo, as they file out of the stadium. The people stop, turn around, and clap back. The Spaniards, who appear to enjoy their work, respond with spirited renditions of `Y'Viva Espana' and `The Macarena.'

Copyright © 1997 The Independent. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:41 AM | Comments (0)

August 28, 1997

Leeds Popmart concert

Leeds Popmart concert, August 28, 1997

By Simon Williams, New Music Express

U2 Leeds Roundhay Park

"... It isn't called PopMart any more. No sirree. For us Blighty bleeders who don't, like, comprehend the whole bally Yankee supermart/market concept, U2 have craftily updated their whole touring promotion and, according to the legion of posters smeared across the derelict pubs and shops lining the route to Roundhay Park, rechristened it PopSport. Oh, and there's a bloody big football on the posters as well, just in case we haven't noticed just how adroitly they've transferred their cultural allegiances from the US of A to the U of, uh, K. So there's this huge lemon, right. And the yellow skin peels away to reveal a sort of vast silver citrus-shaped disco ball. And then the ball trundles along this catwalk into the audience and then it stops and the top half sort of slowly lifts off and U2 are standing there and this metal ladder appears and the band walk down and all this equipment has suddenly appeared at the end of the catwalk and the band sort of launch into 'Discoth?que', like, in the middle of the crowd and it's just the start of the encores and, no ociffer, I'm pot nissed, it really, really did happen...

...As did many other things tonight, not all of them quite so jaw-droppingly amazing, but still pretty damn saucy. See, from the moment they dramatically appear stage-right and stride along an alleyway through the sodding audience to a final, carefree version of 'Rain' just over two hours later, U2 pretty much blow every conception of live performances and their alleged limitations out of the water. Light years ago, their cursed Red Rocks farrago (remember the white flags? The mullets? The manic bleat preaching?! Lawks!) catapulted the freaky foursome into the shameful realm of the rawk arena. Over a decade on, we have our own new generation of big stage bastardos, with Oasis, Blur, Radiohead and The Charlatans already booked into suddenly credible binocular-friendly venues before Crimbo. And rest assured that none of them will provide entertainment on a scale anywhere near as staggering as this.

The plot is pretty simple: for the old crowd pleasers (see 'I Will Follow', '(Pride) In The Name Of Love', 'New Year's Day') the theme is stripped down and euphoric; for the later efforts (see the majority of the quite literally tune-unfriendly 'Pop' album) the spectacle is all and, more often than not, utterly spectacular. And here's the rub. U2 used to be more substance than style Now they're more style than substance and represent older men getting to grips with younger people's dance-dazzled sounds. Somewhere in the middle you'll find PopSport in all its awesome, gizmo-grinning glory. "George Harrison says you shouldn't be here!" yells Bono, a man who obviously snorts the tabloids. "It's all big fucking hats and lemons!" It is, too, courtesy of The Edge's camp cowboy attire and one large bright yellow bugger stage-left, but when U2's retort is the gentlest of touches of 'My Sweet Lord' at the close of 'Mysterious Ways' you realise just how much they're enjoying this whole supposedly hard-nosed corporate touring fandango.

The highlights, then: Bono doing his traditional dance-with-a-girlie-from-the-audience act during a bionic 'Miami', and offering her a cigar; the cloud-bursting lasers for 'Bullet The Blue Sky'; the way in which Bono subverts all the Big Rock bollocks by dragging the crowd down into a 'Radio Ga Ga'-style mass clapalong; a stack of screamingly familiar genre-buggering songs which we haven't got time to detail because our minds are too busy being boggled by the cheeky, funky things in U2's life. And oh yeah, one other small-but-rather significant bit: somewhere in the middle of the set Bono and The Edge are at the far end of the catwalk with their acoustic guitars, duetting on 'Staring At The Sun'. Bono has already beamingly ordered the crowd not to laugh at his fretboard, uh, dexterity. In a few minutes The Edge will be striding solo on that same catwalk, bellowing 'Singing In The Rain'.

Throughout the entire experience fans will be waving flowers. Dads will be shouting along. Geezers will be hugging each other. Mothers will be clapping. Small girls will be quivering. And small boys? Hey, we all know about small boys and their jiving, jumpers for goalposts, right? Yes."

Copyright © 1997 New Musical Express. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:34 AM | Comments (0)

August 26, 1997

U2 - A Sort Of Belfast Homecoming

Belfast Popmart concert, August 26, 1997

U2 - A SORT OF BELFAST HOMECOMING (A postscript to TRiSH)

By Dan McGinn

It's 5.40pm and the taxi cab has pulled up outside my house in north Belfast. The sun has disappeared. The wind is blowing and the weathermen are predicting rain.

But as I'm ferried through the streets of the city, I know Belfast couldn't give a toss. Rain or shine - we're here to celebrate. U2 are back in Northern Ireland for the first time in over a decade and we're going to tell them how much we missed them.

As I walk up Royal Avenue, past Belfast City Hall, up Bedford Street and Dublin Road, the crowds thicken.

My Walkman is tuned into BBC Radio Ulster's `Evening Extra' news programme which in between reports of the Irish and British governments' meeting over the peace process and farming news carries regular updates on U2's arrival.

We are told the band were met by about 30 journalists at Belfast International Airport where Bono spoke to them about their excitement at the prospect of playing Ulster again - especially in the wake of the recent IRA ceasefire.

"This is our second home. We've been wanting to play Belfast for such a long time and it is going to be one of the highlights of this tour."

"Belfast audiences are notorious for the reception they give to bands. In fact, Irish audiences are notorious. We have our clapometer out for the Belfast and Dublin shows just to see who's the loudest."

`Evening Extra' presenter Mark Carruthers dissects U2's career with rockjournalist Stuart Bailie as we wisk through Queen's University, skimming the outskirts of the Botanic Gardens and the Stranmillis Road - the heart of the student district.

Some enterprising students and local restaurants have organised parties and barbecues and the dodgy merchandisers are doing a steady business under the nose of the RUC traffic cops.

The crowd has now become a sea of concertgoers converging on the entrance to the Botanic Gardens concert site in tiny residential Ridgeway Street. A crowd of luvvies stand on the roof of the Lyric Theatre (which gave Liam Neeson his first break into acting) for an impromptu U2 party.

Within a matter of seconds, I'm in the concert grounds and make a beeline for the merchandise stall. Yes, TRiSH, I was also at Wembley last Friday and was gobsmacked by the show. My only regret was that I was too lazy to buy a programme and a T-shirt.

It costs #25 and the assistant (God bless her) says thanks to me when I produce a wrinkled #20 note and a #5 note.

"You wouldn't believe how happy we are to see a fiver. Thank you so much, "you absolute sweetheart!"

I pick my spot - stage right by one of the spotlight towers and settle down, hoping the grey blanket of cloud will not burst like it normally does in this city.

Behind me, residents in Ridgeway Street overlooking the concert site from a hill are also holding impromptu garden parties - peering over their garden fences, through open windows and on balconies at the concert site.

The rest of us mere mortals are jealous to the teeth. Bastards, they get the concert for free and if this is the first of many concerts at this site, they'll have the most desired properties in Belfast.

I mean, just think of it - U2 playing in your back garden. That giant arch, a view of the huge screen, the wall of sound - all between your garden hut and the fence.

Ash come on around 7pm - local boys made good from Downpatrick (and a new guitarist - a girl called Shauna). They swoop around the stage like a reminder of early U2 playing `The Girl From Mars,' `Goldfinger,' `Oh Yeah' and "the one that was used in the Heineken ad" as they call it.

Howie B spins discs, trip hop style - throwing in some unexpected tunes `Ob La Di, Ob La Dah', The Verve's `Bittersweet Symphony' and 1997 Eurovision Song Contest winners, Katrina and the Waves' old hit `Walking On Sunshine'.

A quick fix of Larry and Adam's reworking of `The Theme From Mission Impossible' and Howie B segues (horrible word) into `POP Music'.

The crowd erupts as the screen lights up with various PopMart logos and eventually the image of our four heroes making their way through the Belfast crowd.

The Edge has his `I Know This Is Camp But I'm Having A Blast' look about him, Adam is his usual cool self dressed someone in a nuclear power plant and Larry has his trademark `Don't Fuck With Me' frown.

Bono shadowboxes like a demented Barry McGuigan in his blue robe. The party has begun.

The set list for Belfast (Tuesday, August 26) was as follows:

1. POP Music: As in Wembley on Friday, a triumphant entrance by the band

2. MOFO: A breathtaking fusion of distorted image, colour and sound

3. I Will Follow: Belfast erupts. This is a U2 song we remember when they played the McMordie (now Mandela) Hall in Queen's University Students' Union

4. Gone: The Edge's guitar oozes anguish. There is something desperately defiant about this live version of the song. But the first few lines could almost be U2's apology to Belfast fans for not having played there in over a decade. `You get to feel so guilty/you get so much for so little, then you find that feeling just won't go away. You're holding onto every thing so tightly/till there's nothing left for you anyway...' Extremely poignant. We were up with the sun and weren't coming down..

5. Even Better Than The Real Thing: A real crowd pleaser. Bono adds a verse of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's `Two Tribes' (very appropriate given where the band is playing). His first words to the crowd as the song starts is the chant "Belfast! Belfast! Belfast! We'll kiss your ass!"

6. Last Night On Earth: The shopping cartoon holds the Belfast audience spellbound. U2 clearly has the audience in the palm of its hand.

7. Until The End of the World: A really thumping version. It strikes me how much clearer U2 sound tonight in an open park venue than at Wembley Stadium. I then realise the lights piercing the Belfast sky two miles up into the air and it seems to have done the trick. The grey bank of cloud has broken up. The crowd goes wild when a light aircraft flies through the centre of wall of light.

8. New Year's Day: Another crowd pleaser. Edge's keyboard sounds melancholic.

9. Pride (In The Name of Love): There's something very moving about this version tonight. Perhaps, it is because Martin Luther King is a symbol of inspiration for those who have struggled for peace and equality not just in the US but in Northern Ireland. The song just reaches to us....

10. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For: Bono, in his intro, declares: "What a night! Thanks, Belfast, for letting us play this city atsuch short notice when it looked like we couldn't play our own. Funny old world, isn't it?" The crowd are really sucked into the song, prompting Bono and the Edge to lead into Ben E. King's `Stand By Me'.

11. All I Want Is You: As in Wembley, the response to this version is ecstatic. What's happening? Is that a lump in my throat?

12. Straing at the Sun: TRiSH is right in her Wembley reviews about Bono's guitar playing. The harmony works well too. As they make their way to the mikes, Bono declares: "Highly appropriate, isn't it, that we brought a lemon to the Botanic Gardens in Belfast, don't you think?"

13. The Edge's Karaoke - The guitarist gets the biggest laugh of the night. "This is not a rebel song. It's an Elvis song. I want to sing this one for Ian (Paisley), David (Trimble), Gerry (Adams), John (Hume), Mo (Mowlam) and Tony (Blair)." He launches into a spirited rendition of `Suspicious Minds' as in Wembley, last Friday (proof that Elvis isn't dead, he's just pretending to be Irish). Never was a song more uncannily accurate for our politicians in Northern Ireland...

14. MIAMI! : Bono gets to pout and preen in his Fidel Castro gear. He plucks two stunning blondes from the audience, telling them after lighting their Havana cigars: "Sorry girls, gotta go back to work!"

15. Bullet the Blue Sky : Segues (there's that horrible word again) well into the Joshua Tree song. We have the West Side Story/America bit too!

16. Please: Undoubtedly the show stopping moment in the Belfast gig. Bono introduces the song quite simply. No lecture, just "Please stop the fighting. You know what this song is about..." The song is charged with emotion from Bono's impassioned singing, The Edge's guitar wailing with pain and Larry's pounding drums. There is a taste of `Sunday Bloody Sunday' in The Edge, Adam and Larry's playing and `In the Name of the Father' in Bono's singing. The green blocks on the screen marching towards and eventually devouring the orange are all the more affecting, given the site on which this conert is being held - the Ormeau embankment where nationalist and unionist, green and orange, Catholic and Protestant nearly came to blows during the 12th of July marching controversy prior to the IRA ceasefire. In his roll call of months, Bono gets fixated on September - the date when all-party talks involving Sinn Fein (the IRA's political wing) will take place for the first time. Please Northern Ireland, get up off your knees....

17. Where the Streets Have No Name: A rousing version. We sang our hearts out as we did at Wembley. The Underworld/`Born Slippy'-style chant of the lines from `The Playboy Mansion' brings the first part of the show to a thrilling climax.

18. Lemon (The Perfecto Mix): Having seen the tour at Wembley, I wondered if the glitterball lemon effect would work in a park. I was about to be (gladly) proved wrong....

19. Discotheque/Black Betty: The spaceship cartoon, followed by the band's spectacular re-emergence from the glitterball lemon simply astounds the Belfast crowd who whoop along with delight. The song is rollicking good fun.

20. If You Wear That Velvet Dress: I remember being slightly disappointed by this at Wembley but tonight, even if the moon wasn't shining clealry, Bono's voice was.

21. Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me: Camp. Sleazy. Schlocky. There's millions of adjectives to describe this. I notice halfway through the song how Bono has developed a Tom Jones style wiggle of his hand as he sings. The transformation to Las Vegas casino singer is almost complete....

22. Mysterious Ways: At last, Bono and the Edge are giving as much attention as possible to us stage right. As he launches into the song, the lead singer also pays tribute to "the good people who live in the houses surrounding Botanic Gardens for their generosity in allowing us to play here tonight". A crackingly good version. God, I'm almost tiring of praising them.....

23. One/Unchained Melody: Bono heralds the end of the concert with this emotional parting shot to the Belfast crowd. I don't think I've heard a better live version of this song or its accompanying burst of the Righteous Brothers' `Unchained Melody'. In his intro, Bono tells us: "You know, to be one is a great thing but to respect differences may be even greater, don't you think?"

For one night, 40,000 people in Northern Ireland were happy to come together and acknowedge that we "are one but not the same". It was quite simply a magical evening - a definite highlight of the PopMart tour for the band and fans alike.

We believed Bono when he said: "Good night, Belfast. We'll never forget tonight."

And you know what? I reckon, it's a night Belfast is unlikely to forget either......

Posted by Jonathan at 04:31 AM | Comments (0)

August 22, 1997

Wembley Popmart concert

Wembley Popmart concert, August 22 & 23, 1997

Fan Review By TRiSH on Alt.Music.U2

It's 1.10am and i have just got home after Wembley. WOW.

The 1st support act were AudioWeb; a solid "manchester" band. Great music guys. But when you talk does every second word have to be "f*ck"...?

The 2nd support act were the Longpigs. I thought they were ok - my husband liked them more than i did. But this was ok; i liked AudioWeb more than he did. :) AudioWeb were good for a boogie.

Then Howie B did his thang (sic). I must say that, after some of the comments made about the Howie "interval" in this group, i was not particularly looking forward to this. My preconceptions were misfounded and to quote a friend of mine, he was STORMIN'. I mean to get his album on monday...

Then came the moment we had all been waiting for; "4 boys from Dublin".

The set was sonically superb: The sound was crisp and STORMIN'. (That word again...) And Bono's voice was as good as i have ever heard it. (Top? What top?... :) And the visuals were astounding.

The whole concert was astounding. I suspect it was one of - if not THE BEST - POPMART to date... And the thing that really made it? IT WAS AT WEMBLEY.

If you've never been to a concert at Wembley it will be hard for you to appreciate what a huge factor this is. 72,000 people (sold-out and packed up to the rafters) all shoulder to shoulder - even the seats around the standing-only pitch were standing!- and singing so LOUD and IN UNISON that Bono was awed by us.

The Setlist:

- POPMusic - as they enter. (Boy did we scream!)

- Mofo

- I Will Follow - you should have heard us!!!

- Gone

- Even Better Than The Real Thing

- Last Night On Earth (Bono - "this isnt the last night on earth; its the first night in THE stadium...")

- Until The End Of The World - awesome. (And Bono proved he sure can PLAY GUITAR like a guitar hero, even.)

- New Year's Day (Possibly THE highlight of the show. The best i have ever heard it performed. And I suspect everyone in London heard us sing it. The walls of Wembley were shaking!)

- Pride (In The Name Of Love) (This is where we got EVEN LOUDER and continued WITHOUT BONO for about 5 minutes!!! Oooo-oooo-oooo-oooo Oooo-oooo-oooo-oooo Oooo-oooo-oooo-oooo Oooo-oooo-oooo-oooo... Bono just stood and grinned at us and held out the mic - it was OUR show!)

- Neon Lights

- I Still Havent Found What I'm Looking For (Bono couldnt get us to shut up here either - he wanted to go into the next song and couldn't! :)

- All I Want Is You. (And then we REALLY erupted! All singing with him all the way.)

B Stage - Staring At The Sun (Acoustic version - B & Edge only) (Very very good. That acoustic guitar intro sounds like something familiar that i can't quite put my finger on...)

- Edge - Karaoke - Suspicious Minds :))

- MIAMI!!!!!! (In a fidel castro outfit)

- Bullet The Blue Sky. (WOW. Again i was half expecting not to like the new version as i love the old so much but they just blew us away.) (They didn't do "I want to live in America" on the end.)

- Please. (Good but not as good as Rotterdam. I wanted the In The Name Of The Father bit but he didnt do that. Still, i cant have everything in life.)

- Where The Streets Have No Name/End of Playboy Mansion part. (72,000 bellowing every word along with them.)

-Lemon (Perfecto Mix)

- Discotheque/Black Betty (It is impossible for me to describe how MIND BLOWINGLY GOOD this was!!!) (The lights! The COLOURS! The sound!!!) (Also had a section of "Love To Love You Baby" in it.)

- If You Wear That Velvet Dress. (Interestingly he didnt sing the scratched at my door/drawn its curtains verses.)

Encore. -Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me (Bono took off his glasses, kissed the camera and put his glasses on the lens for the camera to see through!!)

- Mysterious Ways

- One (Achingly beautiful - 72,000 singing along and meaning every word, Wembley awash with lighter flames.)

- Wake Up Dead Man (Bono alone in a spotlight. First verse first chorus only)

2 hours of solid perfection. And i'm going back tomorrow.

Wembley Stadium Night 2

It's 1.15am and i just got home from Wembley Night 2. Remember i said i thought last night was good?! (Huge grin)

How can i explain to you about tonight?....It's very difficult because i think we have just been to one of the greatest U2 gigs of ALL TIME.

For years I have listened to my husband say, "there will never be another gig as good as Wembley 13th June 1987." (The Joshua Tree.) Half an hour ago, after driving home in stunned silence, he said, "that was as good as 1987."

You see, if last night was electric, tonight was THERMO-NUCLEAR. If last night was 9.5 out of 10, tonight was 17!!!

The Setlist was very very similar to last night but nothing was the same. Everything was MORE..

-POPMusic - as they enter.

- Mofo (At the point in the song where the lyrics go, "now i'm still a child (but) no one tells me no," Bono yelled "Tell me No!" "No!" we all yelled back. "No!" Bono shouted. "No!" we yelled back, "No!" he shouted. "No!" we replied ...."No!" "No!" "No!" "No!") (Then he sang "Move me a mountain!" after the woo me sister/brother/mother/father part.)

- I Will Follow - again, you should have heard us!!! (Those new lyrics? The part i caught says "You took a hold of me, You put the soul in me, I will Follow...!!!!")

- Gone (A STORMIN' song - even better tonight than last night. Bono has sure learnt to PLAY THAT GUITAR!!!)

- Even Better Than The Real Thing (Before starting to sing, Bono said, "We're on Holy Ground!!!")

- Last Night On Earth (You know the middle section - the part that was replaced in the single by the "You got to believe in someone" bit? Tonight Bono sang these words just there; "this isn't the last night on earth; its the last night at Wembley, its the last night at Wembley Stadium, the last night i dream at Wembley, I used to come to this town, I was broke and feeling down, I used to dream, I still dream of Wembley Stadium, the world turns and we get dizzy, slipping away.") (Then, at the end of the song, from the B-stage, Bono crowd dives, red guitar in hand! And ends up a good 25' from the stage! manages to make his way back there then stands there in the crowd, doing the chord fingering while he gets members of the audience to strum the strings for him!)

- Until The End Of The World - Totally Awesome. Totally totally awesome. (Bono makes it back up onto the B stage and swings the red guitar around above his head like a battle axe as he walks back to the main stage.) ("I kissed your lips and broke *my* heart...")

- New Year's Day (Again, as last night, the walls were shaking as we sang.) (After the song Bono says, "Wembley, this place is supposed to be cool. Well i don't think you're cool; I think you're HOT!!!")

- Pride (In The Name Of Love) (Again, this is where we got EVEN LOUDER and continued WITHOUT BONO!!! Oooo-oooo-oooo-oooo Oooo-oooo-oooo-oooo Oooo-oooo-oooo-oooo Oooo-oooo-oooo-oooo... Bono just stood and grinned at us and held out the mic - it was OUR show!) ("One man* washed-up* on an empty beach...") (NO "Neon Lights" tonight.)

- I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For ("Take me to church now!!! Take it higher!!!) (Like, we needed asking to? :) We took it higher.) "You broke the bonds and you loosed the chains, Carried the cross of my shame of my shame, You know I *believe* it, *I still do*...."

- All I Want Is You. (sigh...)

B Stage - Staring At The Sun (Acoustic version - B & Edge only) (This version really is the business.)(Bono kisses Edge as he walks off the B stage.)

- Edge - Karaoke - Daydream Believer (Introduced with the words, "This ain't Rock n Roll; this is suicide!!!) (This was the karaoke we wanted!!!! We erupted! Edge held out the mic to us and let 72,000 of us sing it to him.) (Edge, to us, afterwards, "You're an amazing set of bast*rds!!!")

- MIAMI!!!!!! (In a fidel castro outfit) (The link between these two songs is amazing - as is the temple of lights built by the spotlights throughout Bullet.)

- Bullet The Blue Sky + two lines of "America" (It was a lot clearer tonight.)

- Please. (Good version tonight - more intense than last night.)

- Where The Streets Have No Name/End of Playboy Mansion part. (Mind-numbingly brilliant; 72,000 bellowing every word along with them.)

Lemon (Perfecto Mix)

- Discotheque/Love To Love You Baby/Little Black Dress/Black Betty. (Again, it is impossible for me to describe how MIND BLOWINGLY GOOD this was!!! Definitely one of the highlights of the evening - and tonight we were boogie-ing to it!) (My husband did make the most worrying comment of the evening at this point, however, when he said, "what a cute bottom Edge has in his white jeans..." Although i agree with him wholeheartedly!!! :)

- If You Wear That Velvet Dress. (Again, the shortened version. Brilliant.In fact these last two sections of the show were just incredibly intense throughout.Yesterday, the first half of the show ruled. Tonight it was the second.)

- WITH OR WITHOUT YOU. (For me, the highlight of the show. The PASSION.... The INTENSITY...)

(2nd?) Encore. -Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me (Bono took off his glasses, sang "They want you to be Jesus, they want you" (words and music stopped mid line) and just looked the camera full in the face, all vulnerability and questioning, the camera holding the image of him doing this on the screen for 20 or 30 seconds... Then he restarted that verse and sang, very clearly, "They want you to be Jesus, to go down on one knee, but they'll want their money back if you're alive at 33." Later he acted out dragging a mic stand down the B stage as if it were a very heavy object and then "impaled himself upon it, mimicking a death scene. I found it a very uncomfortable moment. Well done Bono.) (And then there's the small matter of him playing air-guitar during The Edge's solo at the end. That image will stay with me a long long time. :)

- Mysterious Ways (Oh i could say a lot about this! It was funny, reverent, irreverent, touching, and spiritual all at the same time. The funnies? Well last night he nicked Adam's cigarette from his mouth and took a drag on it during this song. I think Adam must have told him off for that. Bad move, Adam; he got a smooch from behind tonight instead! Then Bono moved across to Edge and "flirted" with him whilst Edge played guitar, at one point mimicking a belly dancer.) The spiritual? "My love is growing strong, my love is big and my love is strong - she moves in mysterious ways, we move through miracle days, Spirit moves in mysterious ways, lift my days, light up my nights, lo-o-o-ove.")

- One (Achingly beautiful again. A blue guitar not a red one now.) "It's too late, tonight, to drag the *dirt* out into the light". "Have you come here to play Jesus, to the lepers in your *bed*?" "Sister.... Where's my brother?..." With these word at the end: "Do you hear me calling love, do you hear me call Hear me knocking, knocking at your door Do you hear me coming love, hear me come Hear me scratching, Will you make me crawl? Aaa-haa-aaa, Aaaa-haa-aaa......(etc)" )

- Unchained Melody. (Bono alone in a spotlight.)

It was an AWESOME evening. I am still totally blown away by it. This was everything and more than i'd ever dreamed of. Thankyou Bono. And Edge - who played a stonker tonight. As did Adam and Larry too. Everyone seemed more.... (i have no adjective for this. MORE will have to do.) It was a poignant evening in many ways too. There was much hugging going on between the band members. Lots of comradely arms around each other. Lots of smiles - from all 4 of them.

Bono's closing words still haunt me: "We won't be returning this time".

Posted by Jonathan at 04:46 AM | Comments (0)

May 28, 1997

After The Show It Had To Be U2

Post-Washington Popmart concert, May 28, 1997

After The Show

It Had To Be U2

By Richard Harrington
Washington Post Staff Writer
The Washington Post

Forty-five thousand U2 fans found exactly what they were looking for at RFK Stadium Monday night. And after almost four years off the concert circuit, the Irish rock quartet seemed invigorated by the reconnection with its fans.

When the musicians stepped out onto the stadium floor and walked through the audience -- with front man and singer Bono adopting a boxer guise and attitude -- it was obvious U2 intended to reclaim the title of heavyweight champ. Wisely, it fought its battles in a three-ring media circus with both oversize kitsch-culture props and a huge video screen projecting images that, like the band itself, proved to be many things at once: literal, poetic, surreal, subversive and genuine. The action took place under a gigantic arch that started out comically golden but shifted colors according to the needs of the songs, not unlike a mood ring.

The two-hour concert mixed anthemically familiar tunes with more sonically challenging material from the band's recent "Pop" album. Fans seemed to respect U2's new songs, but it was clear they truly loved the older ones, particularly those powered by the simple surge of drummer Larry Mullen and bassist Adam Clayton.

The band opened with two songs of familial dislocation and the desire for reconnection; separated by 18 years in their writing, they nonetheless underlined U2's focus on serious themes, whether couched in the techno-driven anxiety of "Mofo" or the old keening urgency of "I Will Follow." Then followed the Middle Eastern sway of "Even Better Than the Real Thing" and the rough-hewn "Gone" before the band sent out the first of the evening's anthems, "Pride (In the Name of Love)," followed immediately by "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." The latter's graduation from spiritual yearning to martial insistence bespeaks the sense of questing that seems to have grabbed hold of so many listeners.

Of the new songs, the one that made the strongest impression (against considerable odds) was "If God Will Send His Angels," thanks to a spare rendition in which guitarist the Edge built a chapel of notes around Bono's haunted vocals. There were also several intriguing intertwinings: the taut, roiling "Last Night on Earth" with the apocalyptic "Until the End of the World," as well as the trip-hop, techno-flavored "Miami" with "Bullet the Blue Sky." Bono donned a bowler hat and graffiti-design jacket as he sang against a backdrop of postcard propaganda for "Miami" and an animated version of Roy Lichtenstein's pop-art jet fighters for "Bullet the Blue Sky." The effect was like Joel Grey moving from prewar Germany to premillennium America and suddenly discovering life was no cabaret.

U2's humorous instincts were also evident. The Edge made Monkees of himself, the band and the audience by leading a karaoke sing-along of "Daydream Believer." And toward show's end, the band assumed its Village People persona, returning to the stage in a motorized 30-foot disco mirror ball and stepping down a ramp for a rollicking romp through "Discotheque." This was more a Spinal Tap moment than a Kodak moment.

Having dedicated a powerful "Please" to imprisoned Indian activist Leonard Peltier (his name came up when the band visited President Clinton at the White House Monday), U2 established an emotional center with sharp renditions of "Where the Streets Have No Name," "With or Without You" (though it took a while for it to jell) and, for its last encore, the inspirational "One." The song speaks to compassion in the age of AIDS, to the need for community, to the healing power of love. Using animated images of the work of artist Keith Haring, who succumbed to AIDS several years ago, the band ended the show with the kind of powerful statement that has always been its true gift.

Copyright © 1997 The Washington Post Company. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:45 AM | Comments (0)

May 26, 1997

U2's `Pop' Arch

Washington Popmart concert, May 26, 1997

U2's `Pop' Arch

When You're Trying to Transform the Rock Concert, It's Kitsch as Kitsch Can

By Richard Harrington
Washington Post Staff Writer
The Washington Post

With a 100-foot-high yellow arch, a huge olive stuck atop a 100-foot toothpick, a 35-foot-tall lemon that transforms into a disco mirrored ball, and the world's largest video screen, U2's PopMart production, which plays RFK Stadium tonight, is a huge spectacle intended for a huge audience, a musical road show for the new millennium. "It's some kind of new medium, hopefully," says U2's singer and front man, Bono. "Is it Broadway? No. Is it a new development? I really hope so, because the '70s idea of playing in a muddy field where two-thirds of the people can't see or hear what's going on is a retarded idea of what big rock shows can be. You have to challenge that, or don't do them."

U2 has chosen to do them, and in grand style, first with 1993-94's massive Zoo TV tour and now with PopMart. Where Zoo TV was a pithy dissection of the technology-media-entertainment complex (with onstage phone calls to both pizza parlors and world leaders, including the White House at the last RFK stop), PopMart is more genial in its intentions though no less ambitious.

Yet Bono, speaking by phone from his hotel during a recent day off in Kansas City, insists that much of the show is really "simple."

"We've found a way of being able to play in a large place and make it, dare I say, intimate, and the people at the back feel as connected with what's going on as the people at the front," he says. "It's not what some people would think of as an `authentic' rock-and-roll concert, but we're trying to challenge that notion."

Certainly, PopMart, which parodies entrepreneurial kitsch, is an expensive proposition -- it costs $250,000 a day to mount -- and a logistical nightmare involving 75 trucks, 16 buses and a private 727 for the 250-person troupe (with 200 more added at each concert site). It probably took less planning to invade Grenada.

The rewards will be more than adequate, of course. Over 14 months, U2 will do more than 100 concerts in 80 cities on six continents (also resulting in a live album and concert film). With merchandise sales, the tour is expected to gross as much as $400 million, with the band receiving as much as $150 million. It will be 1997's biggest tour -- already, more than 2 million tickets have been sold at $50 each.

The news hasn't been quite as cheery on the album front. "Pop," which was expected to kick-start a moribund market when it was released in late February, opened at No. 1 with sales of almost 350,000 copies (it opened atop the charts in 26 other countries as well). But after three weeks it dropped out of the Top 10. And a prime-time ABC special that aired a day after the PopMart tour opened April 25 in Las Vegas was one of the lowest-rated nonpolitical documentaries ever shown on network television.

None of this seems to bother Bono.

"People talk about numbers with us all the time: After saving the world, we were supposed to save the record business," he points out caustically. "But there is a reason why rock-and-roll music is not selling the way it used to. It's boring, there is no surprise. It always used to have the shock of the new, not from a consumerist way but in terms of ideas, in terms of a different way of looking at the world."

U2's worldview has changed in the 21 years since four Dublin schoolboys -- Bono (Paul Hewson), guitarist the Edge (Dave Evans), drummer Larry Mullen and bassist Adam Clayton -- were brought together by a shared passion for punk. Initially breaking through to a wider audience with its third album, 1983's "War," U2 built a reputation on such earnest rock anthems as "New Year's Day" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday." These songs were informed by Christian devotion and populist politics, heralding a movement that came to be known as the New Sincerity.

World domination occurred with 1987's "The Joshua Tree," which contained such standards as "With or Without You," "Where the Streets Have No Name" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." But the mantle of righteousness grew burdensome, and U2 has spent much of the '90s exploring less grandiose musical tangents, from "Achtung, Baby's" industrial sounds and "Zooropa's" atmospherics to the dance-flavored soundtrack themes for "Batman," "Goldeneye" and "Mission Impossible."

"Pop" is U2's first album since 1993's "Zooropa," and its first single, "Discotheque," suggested the band was about to accommodate a new dance music aesthetic in a bid to join the electronica bandwagon. Indeed, "Pop" has flavoring from the full range of computer-generated rock, from trip-hop and techno to ambient, but it still is undeniably U2ish in its concerns. The band sounds caught between rock and a rave place, open to all the new music but unable -- and unwilling -- to deny its instincts.

"Our first duty is to keep ourselves interested, and we're selfish in that respect," says Bono. "The new record is where we live, it's the kind of music we listen to. In Europe, things are not segregated, so you get a lot of different music just bleeding through. You're hearing a dance tune next to a rock tune next to a pop tune next to a metal tune, so that's just in us.

"But we're a band, we have something that we must protect," he adds. Electronica "can inform our music, we can play with it, but it must never overpower and I think that's true of the `Pop' record."

Certainly, U2's personality contrasts with the anonymity of most electronica acts. "And by and large it's the four of us playing," rather than using samples from other acts, Bono notes.

And, Bono says pointedly, "we should always remind ourselves that rock-and-roll was dance music at its outset. Without the groove, it was nothing. . . . We want to keep our band pure in its heart, but in terms of its head, we're wide open to whatever's going on."

Because PopMart is such a massive venture, there are limits on its spontaneity. Though Bono notes that "we're the writers as well as the actors in this script, and we can turn on a sixpence if we want to," there are so many technological demands -- computerized lights, sounds, videos and effects -- that it sometimes feels as if the production is driving the music, rather than the reverse.

"I'll be honest with you -- over the first nine shows, we have failed here and there," Bono concedes, "but at the moment that arc is in our favor and we're starting to play the most transcendent shows we've played for 10 years in and around all this trash. That, I would suggest, goes back to the very essence of what rock-and-roll is, back to Elvis and his zoot suits and blue eyeliner and the attitude that went with it, and the humor of his stance and movement.

"And isn't that the job of rock-and-roll? Always at the point where it's most interesting, you get the most confusion, whether it's Dylan plugging in his electric guitar at Newport or Elvis in his gold suit or Parliament-Funkadelic landing the mothership. This is what it should be, not a conservative ghetto."

Some critics have attacked the U2 productions and similar extravaganzas by Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones as the rock equivalent of movies like "Independence Day" and "Twister" -- heavy on special effects but deficient in substance. For instance, U2 started meeting with director Willie Williams and set designer Mark Fisher (both Zoo TV veterans) long before "Pop" had taken shape in the recording studio.

Bono recognizes the dilemma and admits that "unless there's emotional connection, it's useless. In fact, worse than useless, because then you become the enemy. I don't care in the end about what it costs to make a movie -- I just care if it connects with me."

The concert begins the techno-swirl of "Mofo" (from "Pop") and the band's very first single, the earnest "I Will Follow," both of which address Bono's feelings of loss after his mother died when he was a teenager. The pairing serves another purpose as well. " `Mofo' is as far as we've gone and `I Will Follow' is as far as we've come from," Bono explains. "It's two poles, but having them right next to each other, seeing them move seamlessly into each other, you realize this is the same band."

None of that should suggest a somber, fatalistic mood, though other songs also explore the spiritual and emotional dislocation that has always obsessed U2. The stage set, the occasional odd outfit, Bono's penchant for melodramatic expression -- all figure without apology. "The essence, the humanity of what we're trying to do is no less by having the laughter and the humor," says Bono. "They don't take away from each other, they add to each other."

The concert also features video expansions on pop art works by Keith Haring, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein (the last actually helping out). Complaining that rock music has "gone brown on us," Bono has embraced what he describes as "the primary colors of pop artists" and their celebration of everyday culture.

"I found liberation [in a populist approach] after having spent the '80s trying to deal with and dodge our own success," he explains. "We've always tried to be honest about our ambitions for the group -- we wanted to see how far we could take it. . . .

"We wouldn't live that lie of `How did it happen to us? Oh gosh, we don't really want it, man.' . . . There's joy in the success of the group, as the records get played on the radio and people tune in to what you're doing. If we'd stayed in the same place, if we'd repeated ourselves and cashed in the chips and opted for an easy life, we'd have a hard time with self-respect.

"Twenty years into being a band -- I started at 16 -- I'm amazed that we're still getting into trouble for the same thing, which some people might call overreaching. I think it's just curiosity, whether political or spiritual or musical. . . . With U2, the reason we're still making our best work, whether it's imagined or not, is that hound is at our heel. We do very clearly remember where we came from and we're still in the same band and so we have to be great or we're going to break up and kill each other."

Copyright © 1997 The Washington Post Company. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:44 AM | Comments (0)

May 22, 1997

Pittsburgh Popmart concert

Pittsburgh Popmart concert, May 22, 1997

by Michael Camp

Slick, Compelling, Uplifting, Trippy, Holy, Awesome...PopMart: Pittsburgh was excellent! At 9:00PM, the sound of "Pop Muzik" started to fill the stadium. To the cheers of the crowd, the boys slowly walked through the crowd, and onto the stage, Bono lagging behind, hooded, jabbing at the wind like Muhammed Ali. Breaking into Mofo, perfectly timed, Bono immediately made contact with the fans. Flawless performance here.

At the sound of I Will Follow, the crowd went wild, singing along with Bono, hanging on every word. Even Better Than The Real Thing was as polished as it was on the Zoo TV tour. Bono introduces Gone, and it gelled excellently, and recieved a very strong response from the crowd at the introduction of it. Pride was a highlight of the show, with Bono repeatedly near the end of the song, turning the mic to the crowd and then to himself for the "Oh Oh Oh Oh's"....again..great feedback from the crowd of 30,000. In the middle of I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, Bono talks about America, and how this is where we work, shop, pray, etc...and that this is a gospel song.....going into the part of the song "I believe in the kingdom come...". Very moving...closing that song with Stand By Me. This was followed by a gorgeous rendition of Last Night On Earth, and Until The End Of The World, with Bono and Edge going back and forth with guitars and voice on the middle of the walkway to the B Stage on End Of The World. On If God Will Send His Angels, Bono cut through some lyrics of it, eliminating the second verse completely to go.

Next, on stage, they broke into Staring At The Sun...it was PERFECT they hit everything right on the head...a far cry from their previous shows where they abort it mid-way through. Edge then introduces a Diamond song, and does Sweet Caroline karaokee style, and the crowd sang along passionately like a drinking song. Miami was very impressive. Bono did it beat style while walking the walkway, and for the chorus, the band cut hard into it, Edge's guitar was sharp. During the song, Bono picked a girl from the crowd, and they slow danced to the music in the background. This rocked!. With Bullet the Blue Sky, the light shone towards the heavens, and Bono did an excellent job, as well as did the band in keeping with the spirit of the song, but increasing the tempo of it...Bono appears with a red white and blue umbrella, and jabs the umbrella, while going into America from West Side Story at the end.

After this, they do Please, it got solid reaction, getting stronger as it went along...Then, the crowd went berzerk for Where The Streets Have No Name, and at the end, Bono incorporates the "Then will there be no time for sorrow /shame" refrain from Playboy Mansion. It was great. The Lemon remix started to play, and for a few minutes, you saw the belly dancer moving to it, and shortly afterwards, smoke filled the air, and the mirrorball lemon started to move forward, then rise. it was dazzling, as light spiraled around the stadium. Discotheque was impressive, and well-tuned, seguing into a short rendition of Velvet Dress, into With Or Without you on the B Stage which had the crowd going wild. Working their way back to the mainstage, the screen fills up with the Macphisto/Batman logo moving around the screen. Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me was textbook perfect. Bono carried the mic stand with him, and scattered across the stage, lunging it at him and stepping back...placing it at the right walkway. Then, the band kicked out Mysterious Ways, which was better than the recordings I have heard of the Zoo TV shows, it was more uptempo, and passionate, with Bono singing near the end a couple times,..."Praise the Lord...Praise the Lord...Praise The Lord"...fading the song out after that. Finally, Bono says to the crowd, "We have one more song for you, Thanks for coming out, God Bless You." Going into One, where Bono improvises on some of the lyrics, closing with Unchained Melody.

Overall, I was impressed with how the band gelled tonite. It was excellent. The crowd was very good, even getting into the newer songs well. This was the U2 that we all know and love. They had, "that spark" tonite, and it was awesome. It was definately worth $60 for it. I had 14th row seats from the stage, on an angle, so I saw all of the show well. The Lemon landed and opened directly on line with our row, and they were so close, it rocked. It was just so awesome, and I wish I had tickets for Columbus.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:36 AM | Comments (0)

May 01, 1997

U2 Moves In Mysterious Ways

CCM magazine, May 1997

U2 Moves In Mysterious Ways.

From its earliest days, these Irish rockers have been a band that worked Christian spiritual themes into its ambitious blend of post-punk and classic guitar rock anthems. Whether it was proclaiming "I Will Follow" or working parts of the Latin Mass into "Gloria" or writing a modern musical context for Psalm "40," Bono was not afraid "to claim the victory Jesus won" in "Sunday Bloody Sunday."

Paradoxically, U2 has also been vocally critical of the American religious scene, specifically the collusion of materialistic mall culture and the prosperity doctrines and pleading for money of our televangelists. The only successful Pop phenomenon that has managed to keep so many ironies alive in the fire, U2 has allowed its art to live in mainstream culture, yet affirm an eternal longing. Entrenched as they were in the dichotomies of secular reality, some Christians were encouraged while others were perplexed that Bono wouldn't just sing churchly hymns, but admitted "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."

If suspicious Christians hadn't given up on the band yet, the provocative sexual imagery and cultural decadence the band explored on its most recent albums (given life on the extravagant "Zoo TV" tour) and photos of Bono wearing devil's horns and a used-car salesman smile may have been the straw that broke the camel's back. So, it'll be surprising to many that on Pop, an album aimed at reclaiming their world-wide commercial appeal, the band seems urgent to discuss spiritual realities.

U2's members again seem more comfortable with the person of Jesus and the mercy of God than they are with the representation of the gospel message in American Pop culture. "Jesus never let me down," Bono sings in "If God Will Send His Angels," before suggesting "Then they put Jesus in show business/Now it's hard to get in the door."

Elsewhere, they find God distant and unaccessible ("God is good, but will He listen?"), a question not unlike those in the laments of the Psalter, yet discomforting for a more churched audience. More discomforting still will be the four-letter word in the closing track, "Wake Up Dead Man," where Bono sings "Jesus help me/ I'm alone in the world/And a [messed] up world it is too." While this mix of spiritual longing and profane disgust is not unlike words from the Epistles of Peter, there are many in the conservative camp who will find U2 on the compromise side of the "in the world but not of it" equation.

As for me, U2 walks a fine line. A compelling mix of gospel confessions and worldly confusion that, given our times, makes sensible art of a less-sensible cultural reality. This is not the bold trip-hop new world music we were told to expect, even though "Discotheque" and "Mofo" dabble in disco and industrial, and the band noodles around with samples throughout. Familiar musical ground and traditional U2 songwriting dominates Pop, more so than on either Achtung, Baby or Zooropa. The paradox and humor at Pop culture's foibles and American eagerness to confuse success with blessing in "The Playboy Mansion" is humorous, and the metaphors that define faith as "Staring at the Sun" and "Gone" provide both comfort and insight.

Certainly, the Christian audience will have some trouble digesting U2's Pop, and at least part of that is justified; after all, the joke is partially on us. However, this ride began with an affirmation of faith, and we are warned about judging too quickly. So far this long, strange ride has been one with many more ups-musically and spiritually speaking-than downs, and I'll not stop listening and hoping any time soon. U2 still rocks my world and teases my mind.

-Brian Q. Newcomb

Copyright © 1997, CCM Communications. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:09 AM | Comments (0)

April 25, 1997

U2's Popmart: Sincerity Masked by Artifice

Las Vegas Popmart concert, April 25, 1997

U2's Popmart: Sincerity Masked by Artifice

By Jon Pareles, NY Times

LAS VEGAS -- Truth battles packaging in U2's Popmart tour, the stadium spectacle that the band unveiled here on Friday night at the Sam Boyd Silver Bowl. The package is high-concept, high-tech razzle-dazzle: a superstar band shows off its big-budget prerogatives and flaunts its status as a consumer product. But the songs, new and old, tell a different, more introspective story, about private struggles to find faith and purpose. With the Popmart tour, U2 seeks to reclaim its old sincerity using all the artifice at its disposal.

The stadium here, with its 38,000 seats sold out, was one of the smaller stops on the tour. For most of its 14-month, 80-city schedule, U2 will perform in places with more than 50,000 seats, including the show scheduled for May 31 at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. To please such large audiences, U2 provides visual pyrotechnics performing in front of a 170-by-56-foot video screen, under a 100-foot golden arch, next to enlarged cocktail accoutrements: a 40-foot-high lemon and a 12-foot-wide olive on a towering toothpick.

Popmart without the "m" is Pop Art, so to accompany various songs U2 has adapted images from Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and other artists who made commercial materials their own. Animated graphics on the video screen repeatedly showed humans as shoppers, and the golden arch self-consciously defined U2 as a product being marketed worldwide. In fact, the band has been merchandised with impressive skill. Its current album, "Pop" (Island), was No. 1 in 27 countries the week it was released. And on Saturday, the night after the tour's first show, U2 was the subject of a relentlessly promotional prime-time ABC-TV special. At a time when the recording business faces diminishing sales, U2 doesn't shy away from the hard sell.

While the tour plugs "Pop," U2 has also set out to top its own Zoo TV tour in 1992-94, which redefined stadium concerts for the 1990s. In that production, U2 presented itself as part of a media overload, treating the band as one of many competing signals, real and simulated. With that tour and its two previous 1990s albums, "Achtung Baby" and "Zooropa," U2 broke away from its 1980s role as a band of painfully earnest idealists. Late in the show Bono, U2's lead singer, appeared in a gold lame suit, sunglasses and devil's horns, as a character he called Macphisto.

In the Popmart production, Bono is back on the side of the angels, or trying to be. On Friday night, U2 arrived at the end of a set of disk jockey dance music by Howie B, one of the producers of "Pop." The 1979 novelty hit by M, "Pop Muzik," segued into the pulsating electronic rhythm of "Mofo," from "Pop." But the first words of that song were, "Looking for to save my save my soul." Throughout the 130-minute set, U2 revived its most high-minded songs from the 1980s, including "I Will Follow," "Pride (In the Name of Love)" and "Where the Streets Have No Name." They went well with the nine songs U2 played from "Pop," which show a similar yearning.

Yet there were conspicuous differences between U2's 1980's anthems and its new songs. Larry Mullen's drumming and Adam Clayton's bass lines have shifted the beat from a triumphal march to choppy, sputtering hip-hop or a dub-reggae undertow. The Edge's guitar can still ring out open fifths, but also uses crackling, caustic distortion, while prerecorded material sometimes adds dance rhythms or surreal ambience. And in the lyrics, true love and transcendent faith have grown ever more elusive. "They put Jesus in show business," Bono sang. "Now it's hard to get in the door."

While the show's visuals drew oohs and ahs, U2's music suffered from apparent first-night jitters. Seemingly sure-fire songs, like the hits "Discotheque" and "Mysterious Ways," weren't solid in their grooves. And when U2 played its current single, "Staring at the Sun," the band couldn't agree on a tempo; after one attempt fell apart, Bono announced that the group was having "a little family row," and a second attempt was shaky. But there were also moments when ballads held the stadium spellbound, among them "Please" (from "Pop"), "One" and "With or Without You," despite distracting images of Warhol's Marilyn Monroe series. The song sounded like a plea to a lover, not to a pop icon.

U2 is still pondering the links between art and commerce; Popmart's solution is to delight the eyes while the songs brood at will. In the show's final image, the golden arch framed a big red heart. It was as if U2 wanted to insist that even the most commercial efforts can still be genuine.

Copyright © 1997 NY Times. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:33 AM | Comments (0)

March 23, 1997

Sunday Times Pop Review

Sunday Times, March 23, 1997

By Andrew Smith

The word was that this would be U2's intrepid and possibly self-destructive entry into the dark heart of modern dance music. It was going to be a techno album. It was going to be simmering trip-hop. The much discussed involvement of DJs Howie B and Nellee Hooper (the former Soul II Soul/Bjork/Massive Attack producer) implied that there was some truth in the rumors. The reality is much less unsettling and much more interesting than could have been hoped for. After 20 years the Irish quartet have made their first great album.

Released on March 3, POP is not a dance record. You would no more dance to it than you would recite poetry to a toaster. U2 have done what Blur might have done with their eponymous fifth album, unfavourably reviewed here three weeks ago. They have not tried to co-opt a sound wholesale: instead, they have taken the spirit of the new electronic music and used it to inspire a fabulous rock album. This, in other words, is the flip side of the Prodigy's Music for the Jilted Generation. U2 have not reinvented themselves so much as rediscovered themselves.

They have tried to recast themselves before, with varying degrees of success. First there was the liaison with Brian Eno, which began on The Unforgettable Fire in 1984. Unfortunately, the Fire turned out to be more easily forgotten the title foresaw, but it is worth remembering just how bizarre and imaginative this alliance seemed at the time. Picture Eddie Izzard lining up with Vinnie Jones at Wimbledon's midfield or Jeffrey Archer joining the editorial board of the New York Review of Books and you have it. People thought Eno was slumming it, creatively speaking, but the partnership proved as fruitful as could have been expected. Their second collaboration, The Joshua Tree, turned U2 into the monstrously popular stadium act they are today -- though, typically of all pre-POP U2 albums, it contained only one unarguably great song, the subtle, slow-burning "With or Without You."

There again, until now songs have never been the whole point with U2. They rose to prominence in the wake of punk and were part of a barely conscious project to define a new, non-blues-based brand of rock. Nearly all of the influential guitar groups of the 1980s were on this same mission from Simple Minds to the Smiths, New Order, the Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses. U2's first serious champion was John Peel, and their songs still tend to have a linear quality that is at odds with traditional tunesmithery. When the group tried to engage with American blues and R&B, as they did on the misguided Rattle and Hum (their Blur), it was about as unconvincing as a phenomenon can get without Mulder and Scully turning up to investigate. It seems a strange thing to say about the most consistently popular band of the past 15 years, but if you liked U2, you liked the grand chiming noise they made rather than their songs. Nothing wrong with this necessarily, but it will be interesting to see how mega-selling works such as War and Achtung Baby (again, one great song, "One;" a few good ones) are judged by future generations.

No such worries about POP. POP sees the happy coincidence of two new developments. First is a wholly unexpected melodic and atmospheric subtlety -- a heightened sense of light and shade (rather than just loud and quiet, as so often before) seems to have infused the material. The simple truth is that the tunes sparkle like gems. Second, the dalliance with dance styles renders traditional songcraft even less important than it was before. U2 are playing to their strengths, a fact that is instantly made clear by the breathtaking force of the 15-minute opening sequence, which consists of the fine single "Discotheque," followed by "Do You Feel Loved," and "Mofo." All three pieces mesh pulsing, technofied synthesizers and/or synthetic beats with the reliably pneumatic bass and drums of Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen. They rock, to be sure, but with a rare fluidity. Driven forward by the Edge's vivid, adventurous guitar playing, galvanized by Bono's finely judged vocal performances, U2 have never sounded better.

It seems obvious that, from here, things can only go downhill. They do not. The spell cast by that monumental opening never wears off. "Miami," co-produced by Howie B, is the first dark offering. There are breathy, industrial rhythms, robotic, walking bass lines, lots of drones and clangs. If U2 were going to slip up, it would be here, but the clever way these unfamiliar elements combine with shifting chord changes and ghostly, half-submerged melodies has an unexpectedly compelling effect. Elsewhere, "Last Night On Earth" establishes a pattern to be followed by several songs, starting off as a pretty piece of nothing much, before growing into an intense, moving gale of a piece. The best of these is "Please," so underwhelming to begin with, so devastating by the end. Again, Bono's delivery is passionate without once giving the impression that his hemorrhoids are on fire. And as with "Mofo" and another sweeping stand-out track, "Gone," the content is unusually raw, the standard stuff about faith and disillusionment rubbing shoulders with some exclusively personal demons. "Mofo" does appear to be an interesting meditation on the emotional legacy of his mother, who died when he was 14.

Of 12 tracks, only two fail to satisfy (the pretty mundanely U2-esque "If God Will Send His Angels" and the whimsical "The Playboy Mansion," for the record). By anyone's standards, this is a favorable ratio, making it all the more surprising to learn that, reading between the lines of recent statements from the band there was a lot of tension and conflict in the studio. On the other hand, perhaps this was necessary. As Bono commenting on the current state of rock music, said recently: "There's a difference between liking something because it's great and liking something because it reminds you of something that was great." For the first time in 10 years, U2 have had something to react against, other than themselves and their runaway suceess.

It is time to give U2 their due, then. They have in the past been accused of pretentiousness, as with the Zoo TV tour (which they got away with) and 1995's 'experimental' Passengers album (which they did not). Yet the latter case is interesting. Even Mullen detests Passengers, though the Edge thinks his drummer will come round to it in a few years' time. Personally, I doubt this, but, in retrospect, you could look upon it as a kind of sketchbook, a preparation for POP.

The point is that there is no such thing as pretentious pop, because, having no rules, it can go anywhere. The 1970s group Yes were not pretentious, they merely mistook musicianship for musical worth, possibly as a consequence of over-restrictive legwear. The Who's Tommy was just a really, really bad story. No, the worst thing pop can be is boring, the second worst over-ambitious, meaning that the scope of its ideas fails to match the sales pitch they are given (the complaint against Zoo TV). But is creative ambition such a crime ? Sometimes the ideas catch up in the end. So it is with POP.

This is a terrific album.

Copyright © 1997 Sunday Times. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:19 AM | Comments (0)

March 13, 1997

Salon Pop Review

Salon online magazine, March 13, 1997

By Charles Taylor

"I WANT TO BE THE SONG, be the song that you hear in your head," Bono sings on "Discotheque," the opening track of U2's new album, "Pop," and that's the band's furious ambition in a nutshell. It would be enough for most bands to want their new record to take over the charts. U2 wants "Pop" to take over the moment, to exist at the center of pop consciousness, the way "Thriller" or "Murmur" did. It's impossible to imagine a record like "Pop" being attempted by any musicians who didn't think of themselves as rock stars, who didn't have complete faith in their ability to realize their huge ambition. Its impact depends on our being able to hear a familiar group talking to us in an unfamiliar way.

U2 is still preoccupied with salvation and redemption, though now the lyrics make room for irony and ambiguity, humor and doubt. The pretension is gone from Bono's voice. But the meaning of "Pop" is inseparable from its sound. U2 hasn't abandoned guitar rock, as the buzz on the album would have you believe. But Bono wasn't kidding when he told "Spin" that U2 is "trying to make a kind of music that doesn't exist yet." Putting themselves in the hands of producer Flood and the British ambient D.J. Howie B., they've made an album that suggests how the new electronic dance music might break with a mass audience. I think that in a few years their embrace of electronic music may feel something like Neil Young's embrace of punk, and to some older fans it may be just as alienating.

How could U2 not be attracted to dance music? Dance is the most messianic of all pop music, aiming at transcendence through the relentlessness of the beat, abandonment of the self in ecstatic communion. If "Achtung Baby" and "Zooropa" were frontal assaults, a band toying with a new style, "Pop" is a total immersion, encrusted with rhythm tracks and electronica, razor-blade guitars and pure fuzz-toned noise, like the doodads that cover every available space of Latino religious art.

U2 has joined its infatuation with the new dance music to end-of-the-millennium hopes and fears that bring out its naturally apocalyptic sense of drama. What they've heard in house and ambient and techno is the ticky, nervous rush of urban life and the exciting uncertainties of a world making connections via technology. Roving over a large landscape encompassing Europe and America, "Pop" is U2's attempt to keep a step ahead, an album that aims to sound like the day after tomorrow. If skepticism creeps in about the state of things, so does a conviction about the necessity (and the thrill) of living in the moment. "She feels the ground is giving way," Bono sings about the young woman who's the subject of "Last Night on Earth," "but she thinks we're better off that way." He even manages to take a detail another singer would use against her -- her love of tabloids -- and turn it into an image that quotes one of the Beatles' loveliest songs: "She's at the bus stop with the 'News of the World' and the 'Sun,' sun, here it comes." As befits an album named "Pop," U2 is both acknowledging the discontents of a disposable culture and rushing headfirst into its pleasures.

They don't pretend adults are immune to those pleasures. "Miami" moves like the sleek, elliptical marriage of an action movie and a tourist brochure. Elsewhere, Bono asks, "Have I got the gifts to get me through the gates of that mansion?" Which is exactly the sort of question you'd expect him to ask, except that it comes in a song called "The Playboy Mansion." The song happily draws a mustache on the longing for salvation of numbers like "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." In that number, Bono was Jesus in the desert. Here, he's Jesus in the Ritz.

Opening with the Edge playing a sort of corrupted blues riff (the blues reduced to a series of electronic blips), "The Playboy Mansion" proceeds through a list of temptations -- Big Macs, Cokes, lotto tickets, talk shows that function like confessionals -- to break a modern pilgrim's will. There's a dry wit to the number but nothing is clear-cut, and the beautiful gospel chorus that brings it to a close confuses things even further. If capitalism can sound so good, who could ask for anything more?

"Pop" is U2's attempt to "take this tangle of a conversation" (as Bono sings on "Do You Feel Loved") and get at the beauty of the way the threads twist around each other. It's not so experimental that it loses sight of its desire to be a huge global hit, but it wouldn't be so thrilling if it did. U2 is trying to sum up what rock 'n' roll feels like at this moment, when the grumblings that electronica isn't rock 'n' roll are starting to echo the same things that were said about disco, punk, rap. On "Pop," U2 moves like kings of the dance floor throwing down flashy moves and a challenge: Open your ears or get left in the dust.

Copyright © 1997 Salon. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:16 AM | Comments (0)

March 12, 1997

Wall of Sound Pop Review

Wall of Sound, March 12, 1997

U2
Pop
Label: Island
Genre: Alternative
File Under: Masters of reinvention
Rating: 85

by Gary Graff

U2 is a band that likes to move in what it believes are mysterious ways. Following the sonic expansion of its first two albums of the nineties, Achtung Baby and Zooropa, U2 was rumored to be working on a record that would roaringly return it to the guitar-soaked rock of its early days. Then came word that the disc was instead a full-on embrace of electronica, as telegraphed by the ambient Passengers side project and the industrialized Mission: Impossible theme worked up by bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. This enigmatic posturing suits both U2 and its fans. After all, how many artists these days — R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Pat Boone, maybe — get us excited enough to engage in such breathless speculation?

What finally emerges on Pop, however, is nothing as dramatic as these early suppositions. There is plenty of guitar work on the album, but it is not an early-U2 redux. Nor is it a full-on electronic album, though production whizzes Flood and Howie B. do bring the noise of tape loops, samples, ambient textures, and other sonic bric-a-brac to such songs as "Discotheque," "Do You Feel Loved," "Mofo," and, in a more subtle way, "Last Night on Earth." This is merely U2's next album — no small assessment, considering the high standard the group has consistently set since bringing its anthemic clarion call out of Dublin at the start of the eighties.

For U2, electronica is a tool, like any other instrument. Had Pop adopted the disjointed, better-living-through-technology sensibility posited by many techno, industrial, and ambient artists, it would have seemed downright unnatural. U2 has always been about passion, not ironic detachment. So, while U2 would have us believe that Pop is about "bubble-poppin', sugar-droppin' rock and roll," it's as earnest, sober-minded, and spiritual as any of its predecessors. Even "The Playboy Mansion" contemplates the House That Hef Built as a crucial cultural artifact, with a bluesy groove and hymn-like chorus generating a smooth, solemn vibe.

Mind you, all of this makes for another fine, captivating album which reveals new depth with each listen. The techno elements meld well with U2's spacious rock aesthetic, and a song such as "Do You Feel Loved" churns stadium-sized energy with an underbelly of subversive, extra sounds to keep the ears locked in. Where "Mofo" is frenetic and industrial, "Please" is sly and jazzy. "Miami" rides along the phat-funk groove of a low-rider, while "Staring at the Sun" revisits the band's familiar terrain of rock-and-roll hymnals. Throughout Pop, Bono keeps looking for God — and wondering if he's left the building. "If God Will Send His Angels," for instance, asks if omnipotence really equals power. But, hedging his bets, Bono beseeches Jesus to put in a good word for him in heaven, on the gripping album-closer "Wake Up Dead Man."

Ultimately, Pop sounds like an album full of songs that will translate wonderfully to the concert stage when U2 hits the road in late April. As with Achtung Baby, the band has sophisticated its music without sacrificing its core integrity, opting for refinement rather than a re-invention, which is fine, since the latter is an empty buzz word these days anyway. And as much as it likes to play with image and style, U2 has always been committed to the kind of content and substance that make this much more than just a throwaway Pop album.

Copyright © 1997 Wall of Sound/Go.com. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:20 AM | Comments (0)

March 09, 1997

St. Paul Pioneer Press Pop Review

St. Paul Pioneer Press, March 9, 1997

By Jim Walsh, St. Paul Pioneer Press Staff

Somewhere along the line, 'popular music' turned into 'pop music' and became an all-encompassing description for all things unclassifiable: rock, country, R&B, hip-hop, disco, punk, funk, and, now, electronica. At its most effective, pop is a dialogue between the past and future that defines, and is completely of, the moment. So what else could U2 have titled its latest stab at greatness?

Like all visionary-slash-chameleonic artists, from David Bowie to Neil Young to Prince, U2 have remained creatively restless, and seek to reinvent themselves at every turn. This time, the group tapped into their techno-trance-ambient roots that have percolated since 'Zooropa' and 'Achtung Baby.' 'Pop' was recorded with Howie B, the guru of Britain's underground deejay culture.

Lyrically, Bono is at his provocative best, spraying out images of God, sex, and the gutter like a volley of keyboard beats, or kaleidoscope strobe lights bouncing off a disco ball. The standouts are the minimalistic 'Miami,' the anthemic 'Gone,' the rave first single 'Discotheque,' and the apocalyptic one-two of 'If God Will Send His Angels' and 'Wake Up Dead Man.'

For U2, they still haven't found what they're looking for, and the sound of that search is raw, fun, and altogether ephemeral: 'Pop' (aka 'Newer Adventures in Hi-fi') is that rare work of art that creates a hunger in its listeners every bit as voracious as in its makers.

Copyright © 1997 St. Paul Pioneer Press. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:18 AM | Comments (0)

March 07, 1997

Rattle And Hymn

Entertainment Weekly, March 7, 1997

Rattle And Hymn

On their probing new album, 'Pop,' U2 search for a cutting-edge techno sound and divine salvation. In both cases, they still haven't found what they're looking for.

By David Browne

Try as they might, U2 do not take to postmodern irony easily. Take the band's Feb. 12 press conference to announce their upcoming PopMart world tour. In keeping with the shows' stage design -- a parody of crass, consumer-culture totems like supermarkets and McDonald's -- the band met the media at a Kmart in Manhattan. Get it? Sitting on a makeshift stage in the lingerie department, Bono and the boys did their best to downscale themselves. They joked with reporters and cannily dodged questions on CD censorship and money. Bono even plopped himself onto one writer's lap -- mine, as it turned out.

In the wake of their 1992-93 Zoo TV tour, this scenario wasn't altogether surprising. Long before their arena-rock peers, U2 smartly sensed that rock and pop culture were mutating into an amorphous, media-saturated blob. Despite the cheeky presentation at Kmart, however, the old, ardent U2 kept rearing its close-cropped head. By the end of the press conference, Bono was comparing techno bands like Prodigy to blues myth Robert Johnson and waxing on about conquering the world. Even when they expressed a passion for junk culture, it came across as a bit studied. "We believe in trash, we believe in kitsch," said guitarist the Edge, "and that's what we are up to at the moment." With his earnest delivery, he sounded less like a hedonistic rock star than a Jesuit confessing to a crush on Jenny McCarthy.

The PopMart tour is, of course, designed to support the new U2 album, POP (Island). The music-industry rumor mill has been abuzz with talk that the band was immersing itself in the new electronica scene. And with its bustling-traffic arrangement, the album's first single, "Discotheque," released in February, suggested that U2 were heading to a rave near you.

Judging by Pop, don't believe the hype. Despite its glittery launch, the album is neither trashy nor kitschy, nor is it junky-fun dance music. It incorporates bits of the new technology -- a high-pitched siren squeal here, a sound-collage splatter there -- but it is still very much a U2 album. The band's grab-at-the-clouds grandeur is heard in anthems like "Staring at the Sun," while its moody side shines in several sultry, atmospheric crawlers. ("If You Wear That Velvet Dress" simmers with a sexiness rarely heard in their music.) Only "MoFo," with its throbbing computer pulse, recalls the work of techno outfits like the Chemical Brothers. U2's clattering, whirring Zooropa (1993), the Blade Runner of mainstream rock, felt more 21st century than Pop.

That U2 haven't completely given themselves over to the new pop is disappointing but not unexpected. With its rigid rhythms and splice-and-dice pastiche, electronica is about machinery and distance, not charisma and upfront emotions. U2 could never be so detached; at the end of "Miami," for instance, the Edge can't resist cranking up the guitars, and Bono wails as if he's reaching for the upper decks of the stadiums the band will be playing on tour for the next year. U2 are still believers -- in rock, and salvation through it.

Do they, however, believe in that other source of salvation? In "MoFo," his voice contorted by studio murk, Bono tells us he's "lookin' for to fill that God-shaped hole." Not since the last DC Talk record has a pop band name-dropped the holy deity as much as U2 do on Pop. The songs are peppered with spiritual references -- to God, heaven, and "baby Jesus under the trash."

Longtime Christians, U2 have occasionally used their music to touch on redemption. But this time, the God-fearing element sucks some of the snap and crackle out of Pop. Electronica auteurs like Moby, himself a devout Christian, construct rapturous electronic symphonies that find God in the (artificial) details. U2 plug in and find nothing. Everywhere Bono looks, God's place has been taken by TV and shallow celebrities. He's right, of course, yet this is hardly an epiphany. Bono may be a moralist, but as a songwriter, he can do better than lyrics like, "Then they put Jesus in show business/Now it's hard to get in the door" (from the delicate "If God Will Send His Angels"). In "Wake Up Dead Man," Bono implores the son of God to return and save us all, while admitting that may no longer be possible: "I know you're looking out for us/But maybe your hands aren't free."

Spiritual crisis may be the album's central theme, but after a while it wears on the music. Rabble-rousers like "Last Night on Earth," about a free-living woman who's "not waiting for a saviour to come," don't soar as they once did. Even Pop's pacing is off; songs with similar rhythms are inexplicably grouped together. And the record's intended centerpieces, "Miami" and "The Playboy Mansion," share a flaw. Each is musically inventive: the former a space-age cocktail samba, the latter languid white-boy funk. But their use of, respectively, Florida sleaze and Hugh Hefner's love pad as metaphors for American decay is as old as, well, Hugh Hefner.

Still, Pop can be divine. The stark, ennui-soaked "Wake Up Dead Man," the shimmery electronic soul of "Do You Feel Loved," the groping, snaky "Please" -- each demonstrates how U2 can sonically reinvent themselves and summon the old uplift. Yet Pop leaves you with an uneasy feeling, as if U2 haven't lost faith in rock but in faith itself. They may be draping themselves in irony, but they still take music, and life, too seriously to surrender to camp entirely. On Pop, U2 sound like the last of the true believers, and they know it'll take more than dollops of trash and kitsch to save them.

Grade: B

Copyright © 1997 Entertainment Weekly. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:11 AM | Comments (0)

March 02, 1997

U2's Super Sonics

The Washington Post, March 2, 1997

U2's Super Sonics

By Richard Harrington
Washington Post Staff Writer

Those who have heard the new U2 single "Discotheque" or seen its hilarious Village People-influenced video might be excused for worrying that the Irish quartet has surrendered its rock soul to the suddenly hip world of dance music.

Them2, so to speak.

What's apparent after listening to U2's new album, "Pop" (Island, in stores Tuesday), is that the lads simply decided not to lock and load with familiar ammunition. Instead, they're adding to their mix some of the new sonic flavors that are reshaping pop's soundscape, albeit more in clubs and edge communities than elsewhere. In U2's case, that means mixing techno, trip-hop and trance with the band's old-fashioned passions, sweeping melodies and guitar-driven rock.

Will "Pop" provide CPR for the ailing record industry? Probably, particularly since, unlike R.E.M. or Pearl Jam, U2 is willing to play the game, supporting its new album with a massive tour.

It's hardly surprising that "Pop" is experimental but ultimately familiar. U2's been breaking and remaking its own mold since 1983's "Under a Blood Red Sky." For the last 13 years, the band's producer of choice was Brian Eno, who has always been more interested in sound than song. Both 1991's "Achtung Baby" and 1993's "Zooropa" were forward-looking and risk-taking ventures. Guitarist the Edge even did a passable techno-rap on "Numb." On U2's recent singles, the band encouraged assorted outsiders to come up with dance mixes to reach a new, different audience. "Pop" simply sounds like a new U2 album that arrives pre-remixed.

Two years ago, the band recorded "Original Soundtracks I," a collection of moody, mostly ambient themes for "real and imaginary films." It was so far off the beaten path that it was released not as a U2 album, but under the name Passengers. That proved to be Brian Eno's last collaboration. "Pop" is produced by Flood and Scottish deejay Howie B. Flood worked as an engineer on "Achtung Baby" and "Zooropa" and has produced Depeche Mode and Smashing Pumpkins. Howie B is best known for ambient hip-hop mixes for Bjork, Tricky and Massive Attack and also worked on the Passengers album. It's Howie B's daft spunk and use of turntables, loops and mixologist magic that gives "Pop" much of its appeal.

"Discotheque" is indicative of one strain on the "Pop" album. Thick and noisy, it's propulsive buzzing techno-funk with just a hint of rock guitar in the middle -- or muddle, as it were. On the surface, the lyrics seem a paean to life in the fast lane, where looking for love in all the wrong places temporarily compensates for an emptiness of the soul. Because the video is so much fun and because the song itself is so energized, it's easy to overlook a spiritually earning that's palpable in the first verse:

You can reach but you can't grab it
You can't hold it control it you can't bag it
You can push but you can't direct it
Circulate regulate oh no you cannot connect it.

Other lyrics and the song's dance-club aesthetic suggest a simpler, physical connection, a celebration of the pleasure principle. But that's just an example of U2's clever use of misdirection, a musical device any magician would appreciate.

At the recent New York press conference announcing U2's upcoming world tour, lead singer-lyricist Bono was asked whether adopting bright shiny beats and pop-friendly lyrics was meant to undermine U2's aura of sainthood. "The honest truth is that U2 are still the bleeding-hearts club," Bono replied. "Our music is still painfully and insufferably earnest. We just got really smart at disguising that fact and throwing people off our trail."

Elsewhere, the Edge has described the new album's themes as "love, desire, faith in crisis, the usual stuff." Faith has been a much-explored topic for this avowedly Christian band, and at least three songs on "Pop" continue the tradition. "If God Will Send His Angels" is a weary, slowly simmering ballad in which Bono acknowledges a loss of faith:

"God has got his phone off the hook babe would he even pick up if he could? It's been a while since we saw that child hangin' 'round this neighborhood".

Somehow, though, the song holds out hope for redemption.

Jesus never let me down you know
Jesus used to show me the score
Then they put Jesus in show business
Now it's hard to get in the door.

On "Pop's" closing track, "Wake Up Dead Man," Bono seems to be calling on God to explain himself, to take some action, to get involved. It's less prayer than challenge:

Jesus, I'm waiting here boss
I know you're looking out for us
But maybe your hands aren't free.

It's delivered in a slightly distorted voice over a stripped-to-basics track. As the title suggests, there's a rudeness born of frustration, millennial blues tempered by doubts that threaten faith:

Are you working on something new?
If there's an order in all of this disorder
Is it like a tape recorder?
Can we rewind it just once more?

U2 doesn't, probably can't, answer that question, but there's some relief in the asking. "Pop" lacks the instantly recognizable anthems of U2's past, as well as the Edge's rock guitar histrionics. You're more likely to hear those elements within a song, not as its core. For instance, the groove-heavy "Do You Feel Loved" reduces the Edge's guitar to squawks, but Bono's vocals, particularly on the chorus, are imbued with a familiar yearning.

The song, which has echoes of "(Even Better Than) The Real Thing," seems to address the dichotomy of obsessive attachment: "Take the color of my imagination/ Take the scent hanging in the air," Bono sings over the cool martial funk of drummer Adam Clayton and bassist Larry Mullen. "Take this tangle of a conversation/ And turn it into your own prayer . . ."

"Pop's" most mesmerizing track, "If You Wear That Velvet Dress," also takes advantage of the Irish ache in Bono's voice. The song's plaint builds gradually, with the singer acknowledging a troubled relationship ("The struggle for things not to say/ I never listened to you anyway/ And I got my own hands to pray") even as he surrenders to sensual desire.

Muddled matters of the heart also get a workout on the trip-hoppy "Please" and "Gone," which deal as much with the search for self as with the search for other. Techno rears its noisy head on "Mofo," which kicks off with some wicked bass 'n' drums before slipping into hyperactive energy with the Edge's distorted guitar jabs. The track's approach is full-throttle, but the lyrical self-examination and anguished declamation are all Bono.

Several songs offer variations on "Discotheque's" questioning of the culture of pleasure and consumerism. "Miami" and "The Playboy Mansion" are trip-hop diatribes with clever lyrics and supple grooves, but they're far less interesting than "Last Night on Earth," which manages to meld cutting commentary on club- life hedonism, a soaring chorus and guitar-meets-turntable effects into one roaring rocker.

To hear a Sound Bite from this album, call Post-Haste at 202-334-9000 and press 8161.

@CAPTION: U2 shows its mirrored image on the new album "Pop," due in stores on Tuesday.

Copyright © 1997 The Washington Post Company. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:20 AM | Comments (0)

U2's Striking 'Pop' LP Both Pushes, Polishes The Edge

San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper, March 2, 1997

U2's Striking 'Pop' LP Both Pushes, Polishes The Edge

Rating: 4 stars

by George Varga, POP MUSIC CRITIC

Forget what you've read or heard. Or to invoke the Firesign Theater-inspired slogan from U2's 1992-93 "Zooropa" tour, everything you know is wrong.

At least it is when it comes to "Pop," the bold and audacious new album by U2, the Irish rock supergroup that performs April 28 at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

"Pop," contrary to previous reports (and there have been many), is not U2-goes-techno. Nor is it U2-goes-disco, U2-goes-trip-hop or U2-goes-berserk in the recording studio and loses its direction, along with its heart and soul.

The album does contain obvious elements of techno (the hyperactive, Prodigy-inspired "Mofo" and the current, dance-happy single "Discotheque") and trip-hop (the satirical "Miami" and the deliciously wry "The Playboy Mansion"). But "Pop," which is due in stores Tuesday, assimilates these styles in much the same way accomplished painters might utilize new color combinations and techniques to expand their range and choice of options.

"Pop" represents an evolution, not a revolution. Even in its most daring moments, the music is carefully considered and executed, not a wild and random explosion of ideas that may or may not stick.

Working for the first time in 13 years without erstwhile producer and musical provocateur Brian Eno, who is replaced here by Flood and Howie B, U2's four members looked both inward and outward for inspiration. What they've found (or, given the high level of angst on many of the songs here, haven't found) is worth shouting about, even if lead singer Bono operates most effectively at a whisper during some of "Pop's" best moments.

Abandoning cliches

On the band's previous two albums, 1991's "Achtung Baby" and 1993's "Zooropa," U2 reinvented itself in much the same way the Police did a decade earlier with its 1983 album, "Synchronicity." Understandably alarmed at the prospect of growing stale and predictable, U2 abandoned the oft-copied modern-rock sound it pioneered in the 1980s (chiming guitars, bigger-than-life vocals, galloping rhythms, quasi-mystical lyrics and epic, fist-clenched anthems).

In its place came "Achtung Baby's" stripped-down yet highly textured sound and "Zooropa's" raw, experimental edge and disorienting moods. And where the band's previous tours had been serious, almost solemn affairs, U2 suddenly embraced all that was gaudy and pompous about stadium-rock showmanship -- then took it to a new, even more overblown level by celebrating (and ridiculing) the band's own celebrity.

"Pop" is another, equally intriguing story. Moody and introspective without being cold or detached, the album continues the band's previous penchant for experimentation but achieves its greatest impact with its subtlety. What makes "Pop" memorable is how intimate its best songs are, and how refined the band sounds even when audibly pushing to expand its musical envelope.

Drummer Larry Mullen never has sounded better or played with such funk-driven authority. Guitarist Dave "The Edge" Evans is at a creative peak, producing distorted shards of sound one moment and bluesy contrapuntal lines the next. Adam Clayton's pulsating bass work provides a firm yet flexible anchor. Together, with Bono, they perform with liberating force and -- when called for -- impressive restraint.

Bono has declared publicly that "Pop" is a "man's record." Happily, that designation does not refer to macho bluster or hard-assed, tough-guy posturing. Rather, it refers to maturity, the quest for meaning and wisdom and the inevitable need to question in order to find answers.

Undeniably, some of "Pop's" dozen songs rock as hard and ferociously as any in U2's formidable past repertoire. Particularly impressive is "Last Night on Earth," which boasts a stirring, Beatles-inspired chorus and chronicles a young woman's potentially fatal, live-hard/die-young attempts to numb the pain of everyday existence.

Bono sings: She's not waiting for a saviour to come . . . she's not waiting for anyone . . . she's living next week now, you know she's going to pay it back somehow.

If "Last Night on Earth" questions the very real dangers of such a devil-may-care attitude, the midtempo, acoustic-guitar-driven "Staring at the Sun" examines the challenges of retaining faith in an increasingly grim world. Performing in a falsetto-inflected voice, Bono sings: Do you want to see what the searching brings? Waves that leave me out of reach . . . God is good but will HE listen? I'm nearly great, but there's something that I'm missing.

As good as these songs are, U2 scores just as strongly on "Pop" with several quiet yet edgy ballads that probe issues of personal faith and spirituality with unflinching candor and naked honesty.

Witness such striking songs as the dread-filled "Gone," the angry, questioning "Wake Up Dead Man" and the half-hopeful, half-cynical ballad "If God Will Send His Angels." In each instance, Bono sounds very much like a man who is questioning his beliefs in the face of the often unspeakable horrors in the world around him.

Jesus, Jesus help me, Bono sings on "Wake Up Dead Man." I'm alone in this world, and a f---ed up world it is. Tell me, tell me the story, the one about eternity and the way it's going to be.

With "Pop," U2 sets to music stories that pose questions, which go unanswered or are not answered satisfactorily. And those questions about faith, temptation, sin and the hope that redemption is still possible are as pertinent to an unemployed laborer and music-loving high-school student as they are to multimillionaire rock stars like the members of U2.

Ultimately, "Pop" is the sound of a band growing and searching, musically and spiritually. If U2 is far better at asking questions than answering them, well, the band's members are only human. But their quest for answers is what gives "Pop" its unmistakable emotional resonance.

Copyright © 1997 Union Tribune Publishing. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:18 AM | Comments (0)

U2 Goes On A Successful Spiritual Quest With 'Pop'

Orange County Register, March 2, 1997

U2 Goes On A Successful Spiritual Quest With 'Pop'

By Mark Brown

+++++ (5 stars out of 5)

Fooled again.

Just as it's done the past two times out, U2 released a single that makes fans wonder if the band has lost its collective mind. And just like in the past, the album has finally arrived to set things straight.

This time it was "Discotheque" with its slick dance trappings and the noticeable lack of a good song underneath it all. They may have been a bit too good at setting up the bait-and-switch this time. Between the disposable single and a flurry of "We've gone techno!" interviews with the press, U2's concert sales have been slack, and there's a distinct absence of buzz around "Pop."

That should end in two days, when the album hits stores and fans' ears. Despite some odd guitar and rhythm sounds, the boys for the most part have put together a nice little rock 'n' roll album. It's a different suit for sure, but it's the same four guys wearing it.

Not as complex as "Actung Baby" or "Zooropa" and more accessible that either of those great discs, "Pop" completes a trilogy of searching, questioning works where Bono looks for meaning in a modern world by alternately embracing and disdaining its trappings.

It's a tack that, surprisingly, is not tired yet. U2 does it with grand statements "Wake Up Dead Man") or with tiny snapshots. "Miami" looks at the surface of that city and its people in a vivid portrait of what's real and what's not, powered by a funky little bass groove chugging through it. The Edge's guitar on "The Playboy Mansion" plays a sly musical pun, echoing the distinct ring of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" while Bono mockingly ponders what a mere mortal has to do to pass through those heavenly gates.

"If God Will Send His Angels" provides the emotional core of the album with the same unflinching confessional honesty as previous tracks "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" or "Stay". "Please" takes the theme of "Stay" a step further, wallowing in what hurting people will do to fulfill their emotional needs: "So you never knew love until you crossed the line of grace/and you never felt wanted till you had someone slap your face."

U2 looks at the flip side of that in "Gone," where Bono mournfully sings, "You hurt yourself, you hurt your lover/and then you discover what you thought was freedom is just greed." The listener is left to ponder what kind of freedom it might have been -- financial? sexual? emotional? -- before concluding it could be all of them.

It's one of the band's more spiritual outings, despite the coarse language sometimes used to make the point. The album-closing "Wake Up Dead Man" is directed at none other than Jesus, bordering on the blasphemous while seeking answers. "I know you're looking out for us/but maybe your hands aren't free."

Some fans think the band has left its ideals behind. That's not true; U2 is as self-aware as it was in the "Joshua Tree" days. It's the music that's more challenging as the band refuses the easy path, either musically or spiritually. In tone, message and sound, "Pop" is a simple triumph.

Copyright © 1997 Orange County Register. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:13 AM | Comments (0)

March 01, 1997

U2's Pop Salvation

Addicted To Noise (ATN), March 1997

U2's Pop Salvation

By Michael Goldberg

For at least a decade now, U2 albums have provided the soundtrack for my escapes from the daily grind. I remember playing The Joshua Tree as I drove along a one-and-a-half-lane road to a wooded Northern California getaway, and a having a feeling of unlimited possibilities inspired by Bono's uplifting vocals, and the majestic guitars of the Edge. Achtung Baby was blasting all the way into Death Valley one winter. And as I walked on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Point Reyes National Seashore recently, U2's "Last Night On Earth," a song off Pop, played over and over in my head.

I was gazing out at the water, sparkling in the afternoon sunlight. I felt a million miles from civilization. Just the sun, the sand, the water and a cool breeze. And I thought that rock & roll is about a lot of things, and two of those things--maybe the most important ones--are freedom and dreams.

No band better expresses both a sense of freedom and the belief that one's dreams can come true than U2.

A lot has been made these past months about U2 embracing electronica or techno or dance, depending on the terminology you want to use for the flavor of the moment. Certainly its true, as Bono and the guys have said in interviews, that current underground and overground rock, pop and dance has had its impact on them. That is also beside the point.

Pop is a great, grand U2 album. Not because U2 dip into the sounds of the moment, but because whatever raw materials they happen to make use of, the results are nearly always something that is both uniquely U2, and, more important, a piece or work that connects to listeners in a powerful emotional way.

Rather than sounding trendy and slight, this album sounds big, confident and timeless. U2 delivers the goods from start to finish. In the end, whatever the sonic dressing, it is the songs that determine whether we'll be listening to this in a decade, or will have long ago tossed it into the garbage with the ephemeral schlock of Celine Dion and LeAnn Rimes.

So let's get right to heart of the matter. "Last Night On Earth," from it's moody Zooropa-like false start, to its relentlessly infectious uptempo rock rhythm, is a masterpiece. "Well she don't care what it's worth/ She's living life like it's the last night on earth," sings Bono about a free spirit who is living life for the moment. Classic U2 chorus. Cool weird sound effects. Falsetto vocals bits. The kind of song that forces you to set the CD player on repeat for like three hours. At a time when everything feels up for grabs, when nothing seems certain, "Last Night On Earth" perfectly captures the moment.

"If God Will Send His Angels" is a gorgeous, moody love song that hearkens back to "One" off Actung Baby. Beginning with the most minimal of accompaniment, Edge arrives with an elegant guitar line around the second verse. In contrast, "MoFo" is a full-on techno extravaganza that oozes with rave energy. "Looking for to save my save my soul" are the first words we hear from Bono, after a minute of pulsing rhythm.

No song on this album tracks in at less than four minutes in length; seven of them are in excess of five minutes. This allows for extended intros and the occasional unorthodox bridge. At an hour in length, this is an album that feels like it was made with the CD format in mind. What I mean to say is that free from the constraints of both vinyl and cassette, U2 has created an extended sonic world that one can enter and explore for a full hour. Put on the headphones, turn out the lights and...

The other major ballad here is "If You Wear that Velvet Dress," which opens with an organ line, some acoustic guitar, and plenty of mood. Bono is so faint at first that one can hardly make out his words. It's over a minute and 45 seconds before he really begins to sing. But when he does, his delivery is all charm and sweet seduction.

But those are just my favorites of the moment. "Do You Feel Loved" is funky techno-pop cut with some pure old school U2 moves. "Staring At The Sun" is majestic folk-rock that expands in a Beatlesque number. "Gone" is all sonic grandeur as Bono sings "I'm not coming down, I'm not coming down" over a raw Edge riff.

It will be months before the all the themes that run through this album emerge. But certainly this is an album that deals with hope and promise, disillusionment and abandonment. As usual, Bono is trying to make sense of the world. Sometimes he succeeds, more often he simply presents the dilemmas that we all must face.

With the last track--U2's version of folk-blues--Bono seems to be saying that we've been lied to by nearly everyone, right up to the Lord himself. "Jesus, Jesus help me/ I'm alone in this world/ And a fucked up world it is too," he sings in a coarse voice. Then the key line: "Tell me, tell me the story/ The one about eternity/ And the way it's all gonna be." Yeah, another story, another fiction for us to buy into. Just like the one about that great piece of vacation property down in Florida somewhere.

U2 makes music that keeps me sane, that makes the frustrations and uncertainty bearable. Pop has already helped me make it through another night. Perhaps it can offer you some comfort too.

Copyright © 2000 Addicted To Noise. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:26 PM | Comments (0)

Rolling Stone Pop Review

Rolling Stone, March 1997 (issue 756)

**** (4 stars out of five)

It is hard to believe we're a whole decade away from "The Joshua Tree" - U2's very own "Born in the U.S.A.," their "Purple Rain," their defining moment of megastardom. Seems like only yesterday that the band was gazing out from the widescreen desertscape sleeve of the 15 million-selling album: four Dublin boys against the world, about to conquer it.

Then again, so much has happened since U2 packed the stadiums of America with soul-stirring anthems like "Where the Streets Have No Name" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." Like all of rock's most astute operators, the band has striven to reinvent itself at every turn, to stay at least one step ahead of the game. Most boldly of all, after "Rattle and Hum's" muddled flirtation with America's roots music, U2 pulled up stakes for dark, kinky Berlin and turned themselves into the mischievous, neo-glam rockers of "Achtung Baby" and "Zooropa." It didn't matter that the Zoo TV Tour was postmodern posing of the worst kind (who could forget Bono's cringe-producing telephone calls from the stage?), for U2 had succeeded in changing the way we looked at them. Even if you took Bono's demonic Mister MacPhisto, his Last Rock Star alter ego, with a large pinch of salt, you still had to credit the guy with a canny awareness of pop's cultural bankruptcy in the late 20th century.

Advance word on "Pop," the new U2 album, suggested that it would edge still further away from rock & roll heroics - that the band was even experimenting with the spooky, film-noirish soundscapes of trip-hop. The album's very title seemed to indicate a conscious rejection of "rock," a shrewd move at a time when America is tiring of alternative guitar sludge and even Billy Corgan is talking of using "loops" on his next record. (R.E.M., U2's greatest rival in the Biggest Rock Band in the World stakes, may have called their last album New Adventures in Hi-fi, but the adventures in question sounded suspiciously old.)

As it turns out, you won't find much evidence of trip-hop on "Pop," although sections of "Miami" and "If God Will Send His Angels" come close to that mutant strain of the genre. What you will find is a whole arsenal of sound effects, tape manipulations, distortions and treatments designed to mask the fact that U2 are still essentially a four-piece male rock band. Unlike R.E.M., U2 know that technology is ineluctably altering the sonic surface - and, perhaps, even the very meaning - of rock & roll. In that sense, their competition now is not so much R.E.M. as it is Orbital or Prodigy.

What we can say immediately is that "Pop" sounds absolutely magnificent. Working with Flood, who engineered "Achtung Baby" and co-produced "Zooropa," the group has pieced together a record whose rhythms, textures and visceral guitar mayhem make for a thrilling roller-coaster ride, one whose sheer inventiveness is plainly bolstered by the heavy involvement of techno/trip-hop wizard Howie B (familiar from his work on Passengers' "Original Soundtracks 1").

Having messed with conventional rock sound ever since hiring Brian Eno to produce The Unforgettable Fire, on "Pop," U2 stray considerably deeper into the world of loops and samples - of remix culture in general - than they did on "Achtung Baby." There's a Byrds riff here, a snatch of Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares there. There are endless fascinating bleeps, squawks, drones and juddering - and a good deal less rattle and hum. (U2 aren't interested in "roots" anymore, or at least no longer treat them as articles of faith.) Even in the realm of the once-trusty electric guitar, the distortion of sound is so radical that you barely recognize the instrument. Indeed, the Edge has a veritable field day on "Pop," one minute out-Neil Younging Neil Young, the next taking the psychedelic funk of "The Fly" and "Mysterious Ways" to new extremes. Those searing, sheared harmonics are still there, but they're compressed and warped and mangled into crazy new shapes.

And yet what makes U2 so fiendishly clever is the way they reinvent themselves without sacrificing the driving riffs and rhythms that have always powered their greatest songs. Coming after the superficial thrill of the glib opener, "Discotheque" - no more than good INXS, which isn't good enough - "Do You Feel Loved" arrives as a triumphant reaffirmation of U2's strengths, built on an Adam Clayton bass line as dominant as the one on "In God's Country" and boasting an instantly unforgettable chorus. And for anyone who finds the more experimental stuff on "Pop" too twisted, there's a trio of, well, rockers ("Staring at the Sun," "Last Night on Earth" and "Gone" ) that are going to sound just dandy in the coliseums this summer.

Interestingly, there's also a marked throwback on "Pop" to Bono's soul-searching of yore. References to God and Jesus abound, far more so than on "Achtung" or "Zooropa." "Jesus, Jesus, help me/ I'm alone in this world/And a fucked-up world it is, too," he sings with a groan on the closer, "Wake Up, Dead Man." "So where is the hope and where is the faith . . . and the love?" he asks on the tremendously pretty "If God Will Send His Angels." U2 may have given themselves permission to guzzle Dom Perignon and cavort with supermodels, but Bono badly wants us to know that he's still deeply perturbed by the ruin and spiritual decay of the world: "Intransigence is all around. . . . Military still in town/Armor-plated suits and ties . . . Daddy just won't say goodbye" ("Staring at the Sun"). Is this man having a crisis of faith or what? Maybe it's just a crisis of conscience: On "Gone," which can be read as a desire to shake off fame ("this suit of lights"), Bono confesses that "you get to feel so guilty, got so much for so little."

Along with the wracked soul-searching comes a return to the singer's old preoccupation with Bad America. "The Playboy Mansion" is all about the sick faith in America's dream of redemption through glamour, decked with references to O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson (and talk shows and Big Macs). On "Miami," a kind of reprise of "Bullet the Blue Sky," the city becomes a sinister pinky-blue dystopia, with "surgery in the air." (There's a witty touch, incidentally, when Larry Mullen Jr. kicks in, playing the sampled-to-death drum pattern from Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks.") While Bono the lyricist can still be unbearably gauche ("It's the blind leading the blonde/It's the stuff of country songs") or just pompously vague ("The more you take, the less you feel/The less you know, the more you believe"), at his most focused he can touch raw nerves like precious few other pop megastars. And all this without even mentioning two highlights that also happen to function as the poles between which "Pop" operates: the nightmarish industrial maelstrom of "MoFo," complete with shards of slashing guitar and a deranged lyric about incest, and the exquisite "If You Wear That Velvet Dress," a shimmering ode to a moonlight siren who beckons Bono away from the healthy, honest sunshine.

"Pop" may turn out to be a make-or-break album for U2. Alone among the giants of the '80s, they have a chance to carry their musical vision into the 21st century while still selling a ton of records. Are people still listening, or has rock & roll splintered into too many different tribes for a single band to shoulder the weight of our faith in its dream? Well, if people have stopped caring, it won't be U2's fault. With "Pop," they've defied the odds and made some of the greatest music of their lives. Pretty heroic stuff, come to think of it.

Copyright © 1997 Rolling Stone. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:15 AM | Comments (0)

Propaganda Pop Review

Propaganda U2 World Service magazine, Issue #26 1997

A FEW YEARS BACK THE ACCLAIMED IRISH POET BRENDAN KENNELLY WAS INVITED BY AN IRISH NEWSPAPER TO REVIEW U2'S ALBUM ACHTUNG BABY - AND, IN RETURN, BONO REVIEWED KENNELLY'S EPIC POEM THE BOOK OF JUDAS. KENNELLY HAS REMAINED A FAN OF U2 AND PROPAGANDA INVITED HIM TO CAST HIS POET'S EAR OVER THE LATEST U2 RECORDING.

No album that I can recollect begins with a climax since a climax is a moment of passionate utterance which has to be assiduously prepared for. Yet this is the first daring feature of 'Pop'. 'Discotheque' is a sexual- spiritual climactic song, a musical peak, and it booms us, from the very opening moment, into a world in which love is scrutinised from many angles, different perspectives, and in an astonishing variety of voices. I say 'variety' deliberately, even though, obviously, we hear only the voice of Bono. Yet surely that voice contains within it an entire range of beautifully controlled voices ranging from the primitively energetic to the poignantly yearning, from the abrasively physical to the soaringly spiritual, from the deeply serious to the cheekily flippant. Within that voice is the soul of the seeker, the indomitable spirit of a person searching for love and peace in a world torn apart by hate and mayhem. It is as if Bono had allowed the obscene, destructive energies of our world into his own heart so that he can give shape and authority to his vision of peace and love. Yet this vision is being constantly assaulted, even, at moments, deeply wounded, with the result that many of 'Pop's' memorable songs are riddled with doubt, ambiguity, a pervasive sense of hurt and a dark sense of loss. Even, or perhaps even especially, a central human relationship, that between man and woman in love, is constantly darkened by an underlying menace which will not go away because violence, in one form or another, thrives at the heart of things.

Love's a bully pushing and shoving In the belly of a woman Heavy rhythm taking over To stick together A man and a woman Stick together (Do You Feel Loved?) The emotionally glutinous nature of relationship is closely examined, and convincingly celebrated, in these songs. Yet few of the songs could be said to be fully exposed; they are, instead, sensitively tentative, brilliantly suggestive, bristling with implications that haunt the listener as he or she listens time after time to words, to phrases that haunt the imagination and the feelings long after the last song has ended. It doesn't really end at all, in fact. Instead, 'Pop' insinuates itself, slowly and deliberately into our minds and hearts and finds its own special place there.

She feels the ground is giving way But she thinks we're better off that way The more you take the less you feel The less you know the more you believe The more you have the more it takes to-day (Last Night on Earth) 'Last Night on Earth' searingly explores the tensions between giving and taking, in love. The insistent refrain, 'You've got to give it away', co-exists with the sense of hurt and the sense of rewarding fulfillment, which are in turn inseparable from the sense of magnificent squandering and ecstatic abandonment implicit in that memorable repeated line: 'She's living like it's the last night on earth.' There are moments when Bono's voice has a similar ultimate urgency.

We live in an age when sexuality and spirituality are usually treated as completely separate realities despite the fact that down through the ages some of the greatest poets and songwriters identified the presence of the one in the other. Think of Blake's 'Songs of Innocence and Experience', D.H. Lawrence's poems, stories and novels, and some of W.B. Yeats's greatest poems. (Yeats, in fact, is a strong and perfectly absorbed influence on Bono).

Much of 'Pop's' deepening appeal lies in its splendid attempt, largely successful, to wed the spiritual and the sexual, to acknowledge the strange ways in which darkness yearns for light, to express the recognition that sexual passion may be a kind of prayer. Take the colours of my imagination Take the scent hanging in the air Take this tangle of a conversation And turn it into your own prayer (Do You Feel Loved?) 'Discotheque' says 'you cannot connect it' but 'If God Will Send His Angels' searches, despite the fact that 'they put Jesus in show business', for love and faith in a passionately lost kind of way. In a world where 'freedom is just greed', such a search, consciously conducted, seems doomed to disappointment. And, to tell the truth that I see, it is the greed that dominates, greed is king and freedom a hungry child who, if fed and kept alive, may well grow up to serve that greedy king. And yet U2 go on to recognise and express the greed and to cultivate the fragile seed of freedom, just as, in many of these songs, Bono strives to connect sexual and spiritual energy. His is one of ever expanding largesse of mind, heart and soul.

All this might seem to suggest that 'Pop' is an unremittingly serious, even solemn, album. It is serious, but it is also, and primarily, stunningly lyrical and musically magical. Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen have years of experience behind them now. 'Pop' is a resonant distillation of all that experience. The more you listen to that fabulous four, the better they get. The beautiful clarity of Bono's voice as he sings his explorations of love, sex, and spiritlife in our mad world of violence, greed, and exploitation is a singing beacon of hope in contemporary darkness. The challenging words and music of 'Pop' should ring and echo through all our lives.

Copyright © 1997 U2. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:14 AM | Comments (0)

U2 Is Still U2, Even When Using The Tools Of The Techno Trade

The Boston Globe, March 1997

U2 Is Still U2, Even When Using The Tools Of The Techno Trade

By Jim Sullivan, Boston Globe Staff

"Discotheque," the advance single from U2's "Pop" album (out Tuesday on Island records), is something of a tantalizing tease, with its oozing hedonism, its dizzy disorientation and clattering electronic rhythms. The video has the four Irishmen dolled up as ersatz Village People. Is U2 - singer Bono, guitarist the Edge, bassist Adam Clayton, drummer Larry Mullen Jr. - continuing with the pseudo-Elvis, faux-glitz approach from their Zoo TV tour, in effect, deciding that they're eager to pay the price - willful irony - for their younger passions? Are they issuing a challenge to the denizens of the dance floor, the highly charged 120-beat-per-minute Wizards of Oz who rule the chemically inflected world of techno or electronica?

Well, no. For all the murmurings and mutterings about U2's immersion in the world of techno - and, yes, U2 is using the tools of that trade here with co-producers Flood and Howie B. - U2 remains identifiable as U2, and this work might also be titled "Conversations With God." As with Prince, it's been a thread that's been woven through much of the group's work since they were teenagers in 1980, and it remains so here.

U2's ideas do come near the realm of traditional Christian rock - Bono bemoans Jesus's dive into show biz (come to think of it, probably the same way old U2 fans might) - and it closes with "Wake Up Dead Man," Bono's rousing plea for Jesus's help because he's alone in this, uh, messed-up world. (It wasn't Jesus who dove into show biz, actually, in "If God Will Send His Angels"; it was those fundamentalist hawkers using TV Jesus.) In "Mofo," Bono's "looking for a place to save my soul...looking for to fill the GOD-shaped hole." "Mofo," a tense, pulsing song, has Bono looking down from the mountain he once looked up at. "Boy," their first album, is all about the bridge from boyhood to manhood. Here, at manhood, Bono asks, "Mother, am I still your son?" The song also has a nice twist on the Tubes' "White Punks On Dope" with a "white dopes on punk" line.

Make no mistake, though: This is a serious record - more art than rock, more meandering and moody than exhilarating and defiant, more intimate than broad-based. In this it's much like "Zooropa" or the Passengers album they recorded with longtime (but not here) producer Brian Eno. It certainly doesn't sound like stadium rock, and those are the venues the band will be playing this summer, reportedly opening up shows with a string from "Pop." U2 has long been about finding new language, struggling to maintain integrity in the face of superstardom that borders on worship.

On "Pop," U2 finds itself asking us to look for meaning, be it love or faith, amid the chaos and media onslaught of the modern age. "Last Night on Earth," with its urgent "You got to give it away" refrain, is about living each day as if it might be your last. Not as Pink Floyd once put it - "shorter of breath and one day closer to death" - but with a sense of purpose and community.

The lyrical content is often at odds with the dark-tinged musical content, which creates, mostly, agreeable tension. Bono's the voice, but the Edge is the sonic master, his guitar style ever expanding beyond the chiming riffs of yore. There are nods to U2's anthemic rock past here, especially in "Do You Feel Loved" and "Gone." But there's a lot here that is watery, and nearly everything moves at a midtempo drift, with techno beats, Clayton's ominous bass lines, and Edge's scrapings and scrawlings adding detail.

It gets quieter, but more engaging, near the end with "If You Wear That Velvet Dress," "Please," and "Wake Up Dead Man." It's in the last song that Bono's voice takes on the most urgency, a wake-up call to himself, if he feels dead, and you, if you do. Edge has a brilliant riff that jars you and sucks you further into the vortex.

"Pop" is a moving record, but it is not a thrilling record. While not quite up to "Zooropa" or "The Joshua Tree," it is by no means the misguided stretch of "Rattle & Hum." Its charms are subtle, and its distance from today's common currency - be it Live or Oasis - is profound. Will fans follow? The name-brand stamp of the band suggests many will, especially those who've followed it through "Zooropa" and the Passengers. Those new to the U2 game or those missing the call-to-action anthems will likely pass.

Copyright © 1997 Boston Globe. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:06 AM | Comments (0)

All Star Magazine's Pop Review

AllStar Net Magazine (http://www.allstarmag.com/), March 1997

By John Bitzer

Album Rating: 8 (out of 10)

Let's get one thing straight: despite the utter inanity of the now- ubiquitous "Discotheque" and a plethora of hype to the contrary, U2 has not reinvented itself as a techno band. Pop is not exactly the document of a band's brave new step into electronica; it's simply Achtung Baby, Part Deux -- and that's a good thing.

Sonically, Pop again makes liberal use of all those bells and whistles that first appeared on Achtung -- Edge's watery guitar sound of "One," the siren of "Until the End of the World," the loops of of "Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World" and even Bono's falsettos and newfound yodels are sprinkled lovingly throughout Pop. Along the way, the band throws in more intriguing loop- de- loops, buzzsaws, and wacka- wackas along the same lines, and with the same taste. It's a rich, delicious meal, one that takes multiple listens to digest, and leaves a ghost of a sense memory.

But ultimately, like good real estate agents with their location, location, location mantra, U2 prides itself on songs, songs, songs. And it's surprising how little credit they receive for it these days. Achtung Baby was remarkable for the personal touch of its lyrics (the downright sadness of songs like "Until the End of the World," "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses," and "Love is Blindness" was often overshadowed by the band's bluster, perhaps intentionally). Here the touch is just as sensitive in some places, more sensual in others ("If You Wear That Velvet Dress" is all lust, yet scarily romantic).

And curiously, at the core of Pop lies a sober spiritual center. The members of U2, you may recall, are deeply religious, and despite their efforts to playfully portray themselves as decadent rock stars, they take the opportunity here to sneak in works of ascetic contemplation and urgent prayer: "If God Will Send His Angels" is achingly beautiful; "Please" is this album's "Acrobat" -- its anger scorches as it builds to a dramatic climax; and the album's closer, "Wake Up Dead Man," is a bitter plea to Jesus to return to fix the world's ills.

For the last few years, U2 has operated with a public private duality: while piling on a thick layer of irony on grotesquely overblown tours, they've quietly written very personal songs -- and crafted them elegantly. The band's standards don't seem to allow for anything less.

Copyright © 1997 Allstar. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:05 AM | Comments (0)

February 01, 1997

Kitsch Of Distinction

New Musical Express, February 1997

Kitsch Of Distinction

RATING: 8 (out of ten)

"These days, I hear a lot of rock ... but where's the roll?" Keith Richards, 1995

YEAH, RIGHT. Chance would have been a fine thing. Pop? Pah! U2 were always a rock band. For all the bollocks they spouted about being a folk band, a blues band, a gospel band, a Gonzo Cod Doo Dah Band, they couldn't even truly be a rock-n-roll band, as they showed on 'Rattle & Hum' - they were too stiff, too sexless (for all Bono's leather keks and Jim Morrison schtick), too earnest to recognize the ridiculousness and fun and funk of it all. They didn't have the 'roll' part of the equation, as Sir Keef memorably defined it. But rock bands made in the '80s can't survive in the '90s without swotting up on some chapters from the pop survival book. The ones called 'Reinvention', or 'Staying In Fashion'. And particularly 'There's Always Been A Drum'n'Bass/Trip-Hop/Bergkamp Piss Pie Remix Element To Our Music'. The '80s breed of dinosaurs can't just lie on their sunbeds by the pool on Sunset and hope that their stray farts will fill Wembley. Besides, most of them come from post-punk stock, and they still care about things like 'credibility', 'integrity' and 'respect' in circles other than Mojo magazine. Ambition bites the nails of success, or something. And if Everything But The Girl can do it, so can you.

If U2 were one of the bands who defined the '80s, especially the latter half - stadium conscience rock, the Live Aid aristocracy, po-faced liberal austerity, authenticity chic, nuclear paranoia, American cultural hegemony, etc - then they are only too aware that they can only reflect aspects of the '90s - post-Cold War internationalism, eclecticism and dance crossover culture, irony, post-Thatch apathy, media saturation - from a humbly detached perspective. They wouldn't dare set themselves up as spokesmen for a generation any more. So, yeah, we'll let them in the end-of-millennium party. Not least because 'Pop' is a very fine record which proves they've still got a great deal to bring to it, as a revitalised, recycled, repackaged modern rock'n'roll band. So how could this happen? I mean, just how toe-chewingly awful were U2 in the '80s? Let us count the ways: the flag-waving rebel/icon posturing; the impeccably safe, vaguely hypocritical say-nothing platitude politics; the men-of-the-people pretensions; the authenticity-on-loan of 'Rattle & Hum'; the rubbish poetry; the endless empty rhetoric, empty gesturing and empty pomp and circumstance of the stadium rock anthem style they epitomised.

Smashing blokes, though, and when they concentrated on writing basic love songs (see 'The Unforgettable Fire', 'With Or Without You', 'All I Want Is You') they could breach the hardest of hearts. So, moderately awful then. Where did it all go right? No, it wasn't 'irony' that did it. It wasn't dance music, and it wasn't a pair of wraparound shades. It was around the turn of the decade, when they realized they were staring into a huge steaming abyss of naffness. U2 were officially uncool, and there was no point in pretending they could still be the band of the age, since they were so shackled to the '80s in their audience's minds. So it wasn't worth worrying about. Instead, they relaxed, loosened their belts and watched the world go by. More importantly, they relaxed sufficiently to allow a certain funk into their music, they dug into rich seams of genuine rock-n-roll sleaziness and even allowed themselves a taste of camp sexuality. Meanwhile, as by-products, a sense of drama and emotion emerged from the ashes of melodrama and bombast. And, don't choke on your Nicaraguan coffee, they had a laugh.

They were still trying too hard. But, for the most part, it worked. There was still a lot of pseudy bollocks and casual hypocrisy inherent in the Zoo TV and Zooropa shows ('Everything You Know Is Wrong'... shaaaadaaap!), but for all the snotty sniffing of the PC police (because we're too thick to deal with a bit of fascist imagery), they still managed to reconcile stadium rock with its contradictions and play with their own 'oeuvre' without, for once, looking like pretentious art-rock arseholes. But irony, postmodernism and kitsch are all too often the last refuge of morally bankrupt style whores. It's bourgeois slacker apathy in smart-arse hipster's second-hand clothing, and even though we needed a spoonful after the decade that U2 epitomised, it soon became an overdose. When the ultimate cultural achievement is a vacuous collage of coolness like Pulp Fiction, you know it's time for a reality check, our kid.

Fortunately, U2 have just about learnt to surf the Zeitgeist by now, if by hip design or natural devotion, and they've made a record which is as postmodern as it is heartfelt, as sexy as it is soulful, as hedonistic as it is political, as light as it is dark, and as humble as it is huge-sounding. You could argue all night about their motives, but whether they've had an honest conversion to dance music as the future of rock-n-roll or just jumped on the bandwagon and bought a ticket in the first-class section hoping some ideas will rub off, the result is some bloody marvellous music. You know 'Discotheque' by now. And in case you weren't aware, it's ... A DRUGS SONG! "You know you're chewing bubblegum/You know what that is but you still want some/You just can't get enough of that lovie dovie stuff". You know, love is the drug, music is the drug, E is the drug, but how the fuck are you going to satisfy your craving when it's all half-cut with cultural and sensual junk food? Not that we're listening until about the tenth hearing, because the crotch-hammering, hard-headed voodoo beats, techno-riffs and nasty urban noise are far too addictive.

Now, this is rock'n'roll dragged grooving and screeching into the '90s. And it's big, loud, euphoric music without ever being overblown. Who'd have thought it? Well, maybe Flood and Howie B, perchance, who are producer and assistant here. But the soundscapes owe as much to the new horizons of The Edge's post-nuclear guitar squall as a few repetitive beats. The likes of The Prodigy or Underworld might have thought of 'Mofo', but it would still do them proud. It's a white-knuckle, techno rock, car-chase through the apocalyptic streets of the nihilistic rock-n-roll night (note that sentence's similarity to old-style U2 lyric - clever wording, cheers) and it is fantastic. Meanwhile, Bono is growling angry rhymes about searching for his mother or something. And we don't mind! Because he doesn't sound like a wanker any more! But, while U2 are successfully discovering brave new worlds for themselves, there's still much of the old U2 here... only different.

Three tracks in the middle of the album have choruses destined to be sung in stadiums across the US mid-West, with arms stretched aloft. But somehow you won't feel like holding a lighter on the end of them. They're not the anthems of old, full of hollow hopeful truisms, because the themes are more searching, bleaker, asking us instead of telling us, evoking a feeling of yearning instead of yawning. 'Staring At The Sun' talks of being "afraid of what you'd find if you took a look inside", with a real sense of despair, now the old simple answers have been proved wrong. There's even a hint of apology for previous false messiahs, "'cos those who can't do often have to... preach". 'Last Night On Earth' then seems to suggest that, because "the future is so predictable, the past is too uncomfortable", we might as well party like it's 1999, because we aren't going to find catharsis anywhere else. 'Gone' continues in a similar philosophical vein: "Goodbye, you can keep this suit of lights/I'll be up with the sun, and not coming down/And I'm already gone". Jesus. Cheer up, it might never happen.

Well it probably already has, according to the final track, 'Wake Up Dead Man', appealing to the good Lord to come and have a go if he thinks he's real enough, or are we destined to wallow in this shit forever more? Like much of this record, the voice is startlingly fragile, desperate. And the politics, if you want to use such a scary word, are personal. Like on 'Please', a beautifully melancholic but also frantic appeal to a self-destructive, self-abused lover, or the midnight blue crooner 'If You Wear That Velvet Dress'. And the effect is more gut-wrenching and heart-stroking than you thought U2 could ever be. There's still patches of the postmodernist reference-juggling of 'Zooropa', most notably on 'The Playboy Mansion', but for all the namechecking of Michael Jackson, OJ and Big Mac, there's heart here, as a picture is painted of a man with his nose pressed against the ubiquitous shop window of the modern society, knowing he may never be allowed in.

The musical backing is stylish and rarely just stylized, dabbling in trip-hop and screeching riffno one minute, country blues, lounge and soul the next. Even 'Miami', a stream-of-consciousness sub-Tricky experiment, just about works. So, U2 in 'Still Relevant In 1997' shock? Oh yes. And maybe this record is 'Pop' after all. In the sense that it's seized the day by the short and curlies and spread its sleazy, insane, infectious juice all over their sound. They've successfully bastardised their own huge bastard vision of what rock-n-roll can look and sound like, and they've gone from "A red guitar, three chords and the truth" to techno modernism without any lingering shame. They still have the hunger, the passion and the compassion without having to make a big pointless point about it, and they've found new meaning without the 'We mean it, man' pious pomposity. Most importantly, after all these years, you can just about believe in U2. Now how ironic is that?

Copyright © 1997 New Musical Express. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:13 AM | Comments (0)

U2 Pop Out Un-Rock-Like album

Jam! Showbiz, February 1997

U2 Pop Out Un-Rock-Like album

By JOHN SAKAMOTO, Executive producer, Jam! Showbiz

ARTIST: U2
TITLE: Pop
IN STORES ON: March 4
LABEL: Island/PolyGram
TOTAL TIME: 60:13
RATING: *** (out of five)

Taking its cue from its fiendishly obvious title, U2's first bona fide album in four years fulfills the one criterion that's most precious to anyone who spends way too much time thinking about music: It is capable of absorbing any interpretation you'd care to impose upon it.

A mainstream rock band taking a brave left turn? Easy. Pop is virtually bursting with loops, samples, and other patently un-rock-like production touches.

A uniquely ironic celebration of pop culture? No problem. The first words out of Bono's mouth here are, "You can reach but you can't grab it," which, when you think about it, pretty much sums up both the appeal of, and eternal frustration with, pop culture.

Or how about that old, facile, rock-crit standby: the eternal struggle to reconcile the twin impulses of hedonism and spirituality. Hell, you could apply that to EVERY U2 album. Why should Pop be any different?

The trouble with that scenario is that it demands an almost infinite malleability. That's a characteristic that's perfectly suited to theorizing about music, but much less desirable when it comes to listening to it.

When U2 was near the end of recording its last proper album, Zooropa, the Edge observed that the band's recent output tended to fall into two distinct categories: groove-oriented material that arose largely out of extended jams; and "real" songs. Applying those two categories to Pop, here's how the 12 numbers break down:

JAMS:
- Discotheque
- Do You Feel Loved
- Mofo
- Miami

REAL SONGS:
- If God Will Send His Angels
- Staring At The Sun
- Last Night On Earth
- Gone
- The Playboy Mansion
- Please
- Wake Up Dead Man

SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN:
- If You Wear That Velvet Dress

The result of that split is that most of the "radical" stuff on which Pop's advance rep as a daring departure is based gets poured into the four "jams". That means the other two-thirds of the album consists of relatively conventional -- albeit highly accomplished -- songs that have been pushed and pulled in all sorts of directions that don't necessarily serve the piece of music in question.

Ultimately, Pop boasts five songs -- If God Will Send His Angels, Staring At The Sun, Last Night On Earth, Gone, and Wake Up Dead Man -- that deserve to immediately take their place among the very best music U2 has created.

And the rest? Well, as with so many elements of the ephemeral culture it both disparages and celebrates, it ends up being something considerably less than has been advertised.

Far from an exercise in daring self-indulgence, Pop is too often guilty of a much more serious offence: not going far enough.

Copyright © 1997 Jam! Showbiz. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:11 AM | Comments (0)

With Or Without U2?

Edmonton Express, February 1997

With Or Without U2?

By MIKE ROSS, Express Writer

ARTIST: U2
TITLE: Pop
IN STORES ON: March 4
LABEL: Island/PolyGram
TOTAL TIME: 60:13

Question of the day: Would Discotheque stink if it wasn't by U2?

If you've been listening to the radio, you've probably heard the new single a few times already. Now I challenge you to hum it.

Anyone?

Not so easy, is it? We dusted the poor thing for traces of a hook and came up blank. Basically, if you stripped away all the neat stuff - all the techno, funky, fuzzy whatnot that's so "in" these days - you'd have a whole lot of nothing where the song's supposed to be. Groovy beats on their own are never enough.

Like many tunes designed chiefly to be enjoyed on the dance floor, Discotheque seems to be on the subject of itself. Bono croons, "I want to be the song, the song that you hear in your head." What a card.

Unfortunately, U2's little joke isn't quite as popular at radio as some people thought it would be, which is possibly why you're reading a review of an album (and listening to it on the radio) that isn't in stores until March 4. With no explanation, the record label rushed Pop to the media nearly a week early.

Perhaps it was to allow more time to ferret out a good tune buried in all the hype.

Now the good news: the rest of Pop is not all like Discotheque. These guys may be full of it, but they're not stupid.

POP SONGS:

Do You Feel Loved: This one isn't like Discotheque - it's even more disco-sounding. The joke is funny once.

Mofo: Another techno-groove (relax, this is the last one) with a driving, genuinely interesting sound that's almost worthy enough on its own. Couched in grand, spiritual images, it seems to boil down to Bono complaining about how hard it is to be a rock star and still make important statements. Perhaps it's the punchline to the joke. In parodying a mainstream rock band, U2 has become one. They know it, too.

If God Will Send His Angels: Subtle and beautiful, this song slams corporate culture with lines like "they put Jesus in show business, now it's hard to get in the door." Good tune.

Staring at the Sun: We've discovered a hook, Jim. Carried by an almost folky feel, this song is another cryptic shot at the establishment. It looks like Bono is trying to keep the promise he made at the 1994 Grammys: "We will continue to abuse our position and f--- up the mainstream."

Last Night on Earth: This one's a winner: A snappy beat, thought-provoking lyrics and a solid rock chorus like the U2 we all know and love. What more could you ask for?

Gone: This fuzzy, meandering bit of filler lives down to its title.

Miami: By far the most horrible track on the album - an ugly portrait of the ugly American. An experimental, backwards-recorded rhythm track used throughout gets annoying real quick.

The Playboy Mansion: A metaphor for heaven. Clever, no? An effective blues feel, slide guitar and lovely background vocals make this another standout track.

If You Wear That Velvet Dress: Slow, sultry, hypnotic Latin groove underneath a dream-like tale of a mystery lover. Another highlight.

Please: Hey, real drums. This medium-paced, spooky-sounding song comes across as a lecture to a persistent ex-girlfriend. It contains this odd lyric: "your stick-on tattoos, now they're making the news." A shot at Pat Boone?

Wake Up Dead Man: Thick with religious significance, here's another song where you have to dig through self-indulgent wads of overproduction to find the melodies. It's hardly worth the effort.

To sum it up, Pop is a hit-and-miss affair that is by no means the worst album U2 has ever made. It's no Unforgettable Fire, but it's no Joshua Tree, either.

SOUND BITES

U2 CAN KNOW THESE FACTS:

ORIGIN: Solidified in 1979, U2's Paul Hewson (now Bono Vox, although who hears `Vox' any more?) and Dave (the Edge) Evans joined Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. in Dublin. Quick favorites with the press, the band's biggest early break came with War, the cover of which featured a harsh looking lad in a battlefield, an older version of the same face they had on their earlier Boy album.

The Joshua Tree vaulted them like space monkeys into superstardom.

PRE-DISCO-GRAPHY:

Boy: 1980. Sold 2.5 million copies worldwide. Hit single: I Will Follow.

October: 1981. Sold 2.5 million copies worldwide. Hit single: Gloria.

War: 1983. Sold seven million copies worldwide. Hit singles: New Year's Day, Two Hearts Beat As One, Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Under A Blood Red Sky: 1983. Live from Red Rocks album, sold 7.5 million copies worldwide.

The Unforgettable Fire: 1984. Sold 6.5 million copies worldwide. Hit singles: Pride (In the Name of Love), The Unforgettable Fire.

Wide Awake In America: 1985. EP, sold two million copies worldwide.

The Joshua Tree: 1987. Sold 15 million copies. Hit singles: I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For; With Or Without You; Where the Streets Have No Name. The Joshua Tree reached No. 1 album in 22 countries, later winning Grammy Awards for best album of the year and best rock performance. Widely considered their best album to date.

Rattle And Hum: 1988. Sold 9.5 million copies worldwide. Hit singles: Angel of Harlem; Desire; When Love Comes to Town, All I Want is You. Rattle and Hum was a double album of live tracks, Sun studio sessions and new material. Album accompanied concert film "U2 Rattle and Hum." Grammy for best rock performance and best video.

Achtung Baby: 1991. Sold 10 million copies worldwide. Hit singles: The Fly; One; Even Better than the Real Thing, Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses; Mysterious Ways. Also well-loved.

Zooropa: 1993. Sold seven million copies worldwide. Hit singles : Numb, Lemon, Stay (Faraway So Close).

ADDITIONAL RECORDINGS:

MELON: 1995. An album of remixes given away to fan club members.

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me: 1995. This was a catchy song released for the Batman Forever soundtrack.

Original Soundtracks Volume 1: 1995. Under the name Passengers, U2 teamed up with Pavarotti, Howie B and Brian Eno. The album is a messy mix of instrumentals with limited vocals.

Theme from GOLDENEYE: Bono and Edge teamed up to provide Tina Turner with theme for the latest Bond flick.

Theme from Mission: Impossible: Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen teamed up to do the hit theme for the popular Tom Cruise movie.

U2 has also recorded with Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Johnny Cash, B. B. King and Frank Sinatra.

Copyright © 1997 Edmonton Express. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:10 AM | Comments (0)

U2's Disco Daze

Calgary Sun, February 1997

U2's Disco Daze

By Dave Veitch, Calgary Sun

ARTIST: U2
TITLE: Pop
IN STORES ON: March 4
LABEL: Island/PolyGram
TOTAL TIME: 60:13

When it comes to the appreciation of disco, North Americans and Europeans are oceans apart.

Generally, Europeans consider dance music viable and progressive.

However, ask North Americans about disco and often you'll be given the brusque response: "It sucks!"

But if those same North Americans are also fans of U2, they'll be in for a rude awakening when the band's new album, Pop, is released on March 4.

Seems like Bono and the boys have been soaking up the sounds of club culture in the four years since their last album, Zooropa. And Pop, though not full-blown disco album, shows techno and industrial influences to varying degrees throughout its 12 tracks.

Of course, U2 flirted with dance music on Zooropa and 1991's Achtung Baby, but this time the experiments are bolder and sexier.

Pop's first single and opening track Discotheque is a close cousin of The Fly, yet the latter sounds anemic compared to the booming rhythms, buzzing guitars and dense arrangement of the former.

Discotheque may be a studio-crafted concoction but, ironically, U2 has rarely sounded so loose and so free.

The next two tracks maintain the momentum. Do You Feel Love is carried by an in-your-face bass line that closely follows New Order's melody for Confusion; and Mofo, with its machine-gun-like blasts of electronic bass, is an all-out techno track that's unrecognizable as U2 until Bono starts to sing. It is, undoubtedly, Pop's boldest stroke.

After Mofo, U2 retreats a bit. Pop's middle three songs (Staring at the Sun, Last Night on Earth and Gone) still shuffle along to accentuated, syncopated rhythms, but they remain standard U2 rock tracks -- albeit fine, ingratiatingly tuneful rock tracks.

The tempo slows for the album's second half, with the electronically treated instruments painting ambient landscapes -- in fact, If You Wear That Velvet Dress even brings back the ethereal, ringing guitar style that earmarked U2's work on The Unforgettable Fire.

So, Pop isn't the band's most daring and adventurous album -- Zooropa maintains that title -- but it is deceptively substantial.

On the surface, U2 is aligning itself with the hedonism and moral ambiguity of dance culture, specifically Britain's Ecstacy-fuelled rave scene -- but only to point out how disconnected society has become to notions of God and faith.

In The Playboy Mansion, Bono plays the part of the Modern Thrill-seeking Man (or Woman) by making the gates of Hugh Hefner's palace of pleasure sound like the Pearly Gates. Pop culture, Bono suggests, has become our new object of worship; the pursuit of thrills and overstimulation our new religion.

And what has become of the mysticism that's been in U2's music from Day 1?

Bono -- who once declared, "Oh Lord, if I had anything/Anything at all/I'd give it to you" -- still pleads to the heavens, but now he sounds disillusioned.

"God has got his phone off the hook," he sings in If God Will Send His Angels, only to add: "Jesus never let me down/You know Jesus used to show me the score/Then they put Jesus in show business/Now it's hard to get in the door."

Later, on the closing track Wake Up Dead Man, Bono sings resigningly: "Jesus, I'm waiting here boss/I know you're looking out for us/But maybe your hands aren't free."

In the end, Pop is not about disco music or dance culture.

Ultimately, it's about being surrounded by people but feeling utterly alone and isolated; it's about having it all but feeling you have nothing; it's the sounds and moods of a pop-culture hangover.

Ten years have passed since U2 first declared: "I still haven't found what I'm looking for."

They haven't stopped looking but, with Pop, they've decided to shake their booties while they continue the search.

Copyright © 1997 Calgary Sun. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 04:08 AM | Comments (0)

January 08, 1997

Music; New U2 single provokes some head scratching

The Boston Herald, January 8, 1997

HEADLINE: Music; New U2 single provokes some head scratching

BYLINE: By DEAN JOHNSON

BODY: The U2 hype machine is gearing up for the first big pop music story of 1997, beginning today with the radio-only release of "Discotheque," the first single from the Irish supergroup's upcoming album.

The band's ninth full-length album, and first since "Zooropa" in 1993, isn't due until early March. And "Discotheque," which won't be available to the public until Feb. 10, isn't much of an appetizer. Even local radio programmers aren't sure what to do with it.

The new tune is a bass and drum-heavy dance track with a cluttered arrangement, electronic effects and washes, and no real vocal hooks. Think of "Zoo Station" or "Even Better Than the Real Thing" with nothing to hum or sing but the title.

There are a few cunning four- and five-note riffs, but Bono's vocals are generally buried in the mix, and the Edge injects only a few savage wah-wah guitar licks. There are also crunching, infectious rhythms and solid dance grooves in the new U2 tune, just like you'd find in any good discotheque.

Though the midtempo tune is initially more accessible than most songs on the band's previous release, "Zooropa," it's not even within sight of the band's best efforts.

Catchy, but nothing memorable.

And it's a problem Boston pop radio is wrestling with, even though most programmers intend to play the song and let listeners decide what they should do with it.

"Stylistically, it's a bit of a tough fit for our audience," said WAAF-FM program director Dave Douglas. WBOS-FM program director Jim Herron added, "It doesn't pop out at you initially, but then a lot of stuff out there doesn't."

WFNX-FM program director Bill Glasser was more to the point. "It's supposedly an indication of what the rest of the (album) project is going to be, but I figure this has to be a throwaway before they release the whole thing," he said. "I can't see a whole album sounding like this. I don't know if it's going to catch up to me later, but as a first listen, I'm not as impressed as (by) previous U2 material."

Music director Carter Alan said WBCN will play the new tune "quite a lot, and we've already gotten a lot of phone calls for it." Alan, who's written a book about the band, added, "The new song does fit the term 'pop,' but I've been calling it a 'dark jewel.' It's clean and rhythmic but it's ugly, too."

WXKS-FM's John Ivey said he doesn't intend to play the song right away on his Top 40 station. "I don't think it's that urgent."

MTV is dancing to the beat of "Discotheque" in a big way. The cable music channel is planning a 12-hour U2 music block beginning tomorrow at 6 a.m.

Copyright © 1997 Globe Newspaper Company. All rights reserved.

Posted by Jonathan at 07:19 PM | Comments (0)