U2

All That You Can't Leave Behind

...And a Few Things You Possibly Could

Review Score:

(8/10)
Depending on your point of view, ALL THAT YOU CAN'T LEAVE BEHIND is either a return to greatness or a slight retreat from it. For countless fans who fell in love with U2 in the 1980s but found the band's nineties output increasingly alienating, this album constituted a long-overdue musical time capsule. Others (such as myself), however, who consider U2's latterday catalogue an even greater achievement than its youthful masterworks, can't help but consider ATYCLB a bit tame. The album's whelming commercial success - it sold millions of copies and garnered a slew of Grammy awards including Album of the Year and two (Count them, two!) consecutive Songs of the Year - only seems to somehow add weight to both arguments.
But in fact, both arguments are largely off the mark. Granted, ATYCLB bears little resemblance to the trio of boundary-busting opuses with which U2 so graciously seasoned the largely atrocious soup of nineties pop and rock; but it really doesn't sound much like eighties U2, either. And if the relatively safe and simple song cycle contained herein doesn't challenge listeners in the way ZOOROPA and POP did, it's a reassuring reminder that this is a band no more willing to be pigeonholed as progressivists than as political poets or classic rockers.
What "old" U2 fans like about ATYCLB is, undoubtedly, the fact that it emphasizes songcraft over sonics, accessible melodies over experimentation and universal messages over elliptical introspection. This is evident right from the megahit opener, "Beautiful Day," a superlative U2 anthem whose joyous infectiousness is helped, rather than hindered, by the fact that it really isn't about anything at all. "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out of" is likewise self-explanatory, though in this case I think the song's obviousness does outweigh its strengths. Inspiration seems to be very much the guiding theme of this album, possibly the closest thing to a self-help course Bono and Company have ever committed to tape. As the collection's "rocker," "Elevation" does an admirable enough job, showing that U2 can still marry masterful grooves to clever observations on love. "Walk On" continues along the inspirational track with a heartfelt, moving appeal to the human spirit. "Kite" is even more wrenching, a lost love story presenting some of the album's best lyrics ("I want you to know that you don't need me anymore") set to a beautifully melancholy tune. "In a Little While" ranks among U2's greatest achievements - a bluesy, humorous strut quite unlike anything else the band has ever recorded. "Wild Honey" is pure cutesy pop that manages to work quite well on its own terms, and stands in stark contrast to the bleak beauty of "Peace on Earth," one of U2's strongest political songs precisely because of its slow, sad atmosphere - the sort of thing this band does so well. Having previously employed an angry sound in its ruminations on the Irish troubles, from "Sunday Bloody Sunday" through "Please," U2 here adds power to a musical statement on the Omagh bombing by toning everything down to a whisper. "When I Look At the World" is another too-obvious abstract statement, suggesting once again that the band probably did conceive this album with an eye on the marketplace. "New York," the second U2 song in as many albums to be named for an American city, rocks harder than anything else here except for "Elevation," which saves it from its hackneyed laundry list of ethnic groups and other such metropolitan minutiae. "Grace" winds things up with another quietly atmospheric plea for better times and better people to bring them about.
U2 has never been a band to do things by accident, and I don't think it's any coincidence that it recorded and released an album like this as its members were all turning a rough average age of forty - as they were turning twenty when BOY came out, and thirty at the time of ACHTUNG BABY. Whether one prefers the eighties or nineties version of U2, it's safe to say that this is the only statement the band could properly have made in the year 2000, and make it they did. While not my favorite U2 album by any means, it's one I go back to quite regularly, and I know I'm not alone. As a rock soundtrack for the new millenium, its place is secure and effectively unchallenged, and that alone is enough to elevate it (pardon the pun) to the status of a minor masterpiece.

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