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 memb