U2 - All That You Can't Leave Behind
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.98 You Save: $9.00 (64%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for All That You Can't Leave Behind
Free Music Review: Another Century ... Another U2 Album
Hit: 5 Stars
Okay maybe they haven't been around that long but U2 have certainly been around the block a few times. The strange thing is that they are still as fresh today as they were on Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua all those years ago.Like REM and Madonna, the music of U2 is still as relevant today as its always been. As a fan I first latched onto them when Achtung Baby was released and I've haven't let go since! Bono's lyrics can seem miserable at times but as Mrs Doyle from Father Ted says, "some people like the misery of making tea."
Okay so what about their latest album then? All That You Can't Leave Behind is one of those albums that you need to listen to a couple of times before the tracks really dig their claws in. I've been listening to it non-stop for two days on my Winamp and its really starting to settle in nicely with the other U2 tracks.
The first track, Beautiful Day, gets better with every play. At first it seemed muddled and a bit of a mish-mash but now that the lyrics have sunk in and taken root I can appreciate the well paced lyrics and the great guitar riffs - outstanding stuff.
Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of is the second track and its one of those songs that's gonna sound great when hits the radio stations. Bono's crackly voice is bursting with I-told-you-so sarcasm, "oh love look at you now!" that can't fail to bring a smile to anyone who has lived a little themselves.
Kite is a track that reminds me of Achtung Baby's Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses? But the musical style predates even that track. This is classic U2 and will certainly take some of the older fans back to a time when they had more hair and less baggage around the waist.
Its not all plain sailing though. Peace On Earth is one of those "earnest" songs that always seem to land U2 in hot water with the fans. Essentially about the Omagh Bombing the song drags along aimlessly and its hard to like it.
Wild Honey on the other hand is deliciously old-style U2 that's easy to listen to and I'll bet money that its gonna be a popular karaoke song in years to come.
Another track that really stands out can be found near the end of playlist, Grace, is my personal favourite. Brian Eno's fingerprints are all over it. This is familiar territory for anyone who bought and loved the Passengers album. If you've ever lived through a painful patch, it'll also ring particularly true:
"What once was hurt What once was friction
What left a mark No longer stings Because grace makes beauty out of ugly things"
In summary, this 9th studio album from U2 is wonderfully diverse. Sure there's one or two clangers in there but that's three or four less than Pop had. Not as good as The Joshua Tree then but what do you expect - these blokes have their own families now!
But there's still plenty of misery in there for the true fans ...
Free Music Review: A new standard of freedom, creativity and excellence
Hit: 5 Stars
With each album, U2 redefines their sound and their theme. They usually explore a single, broadly-defined style and permute it through 10 or so songs, then on to a new theme with the next album. With "All That You Can't Leave Behind", U2 decide to pick and choose both from styles they have created on other albums and tours, and new styles with which they are now enamored.It is this sense of adventure and freedom from being pinned down into one musical style that imbues this album with its real theme: Joy. The idea of a Jubilee Year is one that has captured the band's imagination, and that elation spills over into their latest musical offering.
Forgiveness of third-world debt being a major focus of Bono's efforts of late, the idea of grace both coming from us to others and from nature or heaven down to each of us is the moving text of the final track: "Grace... a thought that changed the world." and later "Grace, ...She travels outside of karma." Listen as Edge lets each note speak in the introductory verse: a sensitive, moving combination of guitar and bass alone. It's not all fun and roses, though. Listen to "Elevation" and "New York" for driving dance tracks so potent that you'll have to restrain yourself from wanting to jump in the car and head down to a club.
As usual, though, the real treat in repeated listenings, aside from the musical details, are the meticulously-crafted lyrics from Bono (with significant contributions from Edge). This is really where the album proves its worth. Unquestionably, "Stuck in a moment...", "Kite", "Grace", and "When I Look at the World" have lyrics that rival the best U2 has done to date. The surprise on the album is "Wild Honey", which has unusual rhythmic pulse and harmonies that are a microcosm of the creativity and detail that permeate the album as a whole.
"All That You Can't Leave Behind" finds U2 focused on melody and lyric. In this sense, we are back to basics. No funny stuff with effects over Bono's voice; it's brought to the forefront and unfiltered. But the musings that this is a homecoming for U2 or that they've returned to "The Joshua Tree" days is misleading, when one pays attention to the themes. U2 is no longer searching for meaning or a particular voice. They are writing and performing songs that celebrate life ("Beautiful Day", "Elevation", "Wild Honey", "New York", "Grace"), espouse hope in the future ("Stuck...", "Walk On", "Kite", "In a Little While"), and praise conscious, conscientious living ("Peace on Earth", "When I Look...").
And they've never sounded better.
Free Music Review: U2 managed to make "The Perfect Album"
Hit: 5 Stars
Before this album was released in 2000, my favorite U2 albums were "Zooropa" and "Achtung Baby" (with "Joshua Tree" in third place) because they created a cool new sound and infused their lyrics with a great sense of irony. They caught the zeitgeist of the times in the early 1990s, poking fun at the European bureaucracy and capturing the sense of excited optimism with Eastern Europe's new freedom. After the dismal "Pop" album, U2 could have continued the kind of decline that happens to older bands, so when I first heard "All That You Can't Leave Behind", I was completely blown away. It was musically brilliant, with many catchy songs, including the one-two opening punch of "Beautiful Day" and "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" (my favorite song on the album). Even better than catchy pop hooks and musical arrangement, they had some great and relevant lyrics, which only seemed to resonate deeper with listeners after the 9/11 tragedy a year after this album's release. I listened to this album a lot in late 2000 and 2001 and have never grown tired of it. With this album, I became convinced that U2 is simply the world's greatest band at the moment and it's a moment I hope they get stuck in with the upcoming new release "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb".
The song "Walk On" is one of my favorites and I was especially pleased to see that it was written about and dedicated to Burmese dissident and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, one of my favorite people on earth. The song perfectly captures the difficulty and loneliness of choosing a solitary life to suffer with one's people over the easy and selfish life of living for only one's family. It's a great tribute song to a great spiritual lady and well deserved, not to mention great tune to begin with.
Other favorite songs include "Peace on Earth", "When I Look at the World" and especially "New York" ("In New York freedom looks like too many choices..." U2 sings). Every song on this album is strong, and even though U2 recently lamented that only "Beautiful Day" was a hit single, this album could have produced at least five more hit singles if American radio was like it was in the 1980s. Unfortunately, hip hop and rap are the dominant musical form today and corporate radio might view U2 as aging rock dinosaurs, but that doesn't take away from the brilliance and perfection of this album. This should quite simply be a textbook study for any band wishing to make a perfect record from opening song to closing song. It starts with a bang and ends with contemplative grace. I really hope U2's new album will build on this one and take us further into the realm of musical genius. They are a band that still surprises and grows better with age.
Free Music Review: U2 get back to business
Hit: 5 Stars
U2 have always been nomadic in their constant pursuit of their muse. It has lead them down many, varied, paths. Be it the flag waving rebel-song singers of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" or "I Will Follow," to the searching, questioning souls of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" or "Pride (In The Name Of Love)," to eventually plunging headlong into the decadence of stardom with "The Fly" or "Discotheque," reinvention has often been the name of the game.
For some of us, that game derailed itself after the stunning "Achtung Baby," with Bono indulging his "I'm just a plastic pop star" phase to the hilt. Yet all this time, the concerts and the music was rarely less than amazing. Still, the CD's "Pop" and "Zooropa" weren't the awe-inspiring, transcendent moments that the band seemed capable of producing with barely a thought to the process. The U2 goal seemed to be, over and over again, to not get trapped in a moment they couldn't get out of, so to speak.
It seems then, that after almost a 4 year pause, U2 suddenly realized that just being U2 was really not so bad a day job after all. So they emerged with an album that concentrated on the band's strongest points as musicians. Not as personalities, not as saviors to the world (which seems to have become Bono's primary sideline gig), just to merely make great, awe inspiring, transcendent music - again. From the moment "Beautiful Day" juxtaposed its images of beauty and collapse atop a message of hope ("see the bird with the leaf in her mouth, after the flood all the colors came out"), you knew that the band had regained its footing and was ready to charge bravely ahead.
That message appears repeatedly on "All That You Can't Leave Behind," particularly in the two songs written after the death of Bono's friend, INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence. In "Walk On" and "Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of," Bono does the soul-searching lyric that he is best at, questioning both why Hutchence chose to end his life and also asking himself what more he could have done. "Walk On," to me, is as powerful a song as the band's classic "One."
"All That You Can't Leave Behind" works on that power. You will recognize a lot of older U2 here. "Elevation" mimics "Mysterious Ways," "New York," "Bad." The band, The Edge in particular, concentrated on the keeping the music as uncluttered and unfettered as possible. This is hardly a detriment. U2 entered the new century with a newfound self-confidence, secure in the knowing that - whatever tangents they may have steered through in the past - being the most amazing rock band in the world was probably the most gratifying business to be in.
Free Music Review: Cherubs' eyes
Hit: 5 Stars
Oh, my AP English class has finally paid off, because now I understand why U2 has gone from "brilliant" to "more brilliant" to "more brilliant still."I'm talking about William Blake, the 18th-century poet who authored the "Songs of Innocence and Experience." Don't click away--even if you know nothing about poetry, if you know something about U2, you'll appreciate this...
The theme of the "Songs" is this: We enter the world with a pure, unaffected point of view. As such, we perceive it with unadulterated clarity, but we lack the understanding to appreciate what we see.
With experience comes this understanding, but at what price? We lose the clarity of perception we were born with.
As understanding increases, though, we realize this. And then we become whole. Only through innocence can we become experienced. Only through experience can we appreciate innocence.
Now, who's that sound like? An Irish rock group, maybe, who started out waving a white flag, proclaiming, "I Will Follow"? Who saw the world in black and white and knew exactly which side they were on?
The same group saved themselves by diving headfirst into the black, as it were. With the Zoo TV experience, they immersed themselves in the sensual and the secular. In fact, they did that so thoroughly that to this day, older, more simpleminded fans resent them for it.
The simpletons can rejoice, and so can us Achtung Babies who understand what U2 did and why they had to do it, and love them for it. It started on "Pop," and it's happened on "All That You Can't Leave Behind": U2 have come full circle, become whole. They are innocent again. They understand the world around them, and now they know why this is black, why that's white, and why there's so much gray.
The band who created "All..." aren't afraid to wear their collective heart on their collective sleeve again. They aren't afraid to ask for "Peace on Earth." They can write the sweetest, most lovingest love song they've ever written now--"Wild Honey"--because they know now that beyond the darkness love is certainly waiting.
They've made their phone calls from Hell, and they are more aware than ever that, while the dark places won't go away, the world is still a true, beautiful place. They're seeing with cherubs' eyes now--the eyes of wise children.
They said they wanted to make an album about joy, and that it wouldn't be easy. They've more than risen to the challenge.
Buy this album. Buy it now. Click now. It will make your problems go away, at least for a little while. It will make your soul soar. It will make you sing.