U2

All That You Can't Leave Behind

Boring... and it pains me to say so

Review Score:

(6/10)
I have been listening to U2 for 18 years, and I own most of their albums. With one brilliant exception aside (The Joshua Tree), they all had many songs I loved and a couple songs I wanted to skip (I am not implying these songs were fillers, but I liked them much less than the other ones). But the thing is, overall, I couldn't really choose one favorite album as they're all excellent.

Then came All That You Can't Leave Behind. I never thought I would one day find U2's music boring. It is true that my expectations were high, in spite of the bland Beautiful Day you could hear everywhere, but only because they had never disappointed me before. Just listen to the energy, be it in their spirited performance in Under a Blood Red Sky, in the raw blues of Rattle and Hum, or in Bono's torn-out lyrics in Pop. In this one, all the songs sound effortless and without angles.

The fact is I bought it when it was released, spun it a few times and lost interest. Incredibly, I even forgot I owned that CD. Granted, I own maybe 700 albums, but every U2 record I have regularly visits my cd-player. I only thought about it recently, when I heard U2 was going to release How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, and I was surprised to see it in my CD collection. I had a road-trip to make so I took it along, a gave it a few listens.

Only then did I remember having heard the songs before. However, with the exception of just a few tracks, I will be just as content to put it back on the shelf and forget about it for another few years. Sure some songs have good musical hooks, some are rocking, or catchy. But none of them gives me the feeling that U2 is playing from the heart. It's really 2.5 stars in my opinion, but for U2 I can round that up to 3.

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