U2
All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000)

review by: Glenn Pfeifer
Date: 6/22/01

I’m fresh from attending an outstanding performance by U2 at Madison Square Garden so this album review will most likely turn into a concert review…but I suppose it doesn’t really matter. I’ve been waiting years for this U2 disc. I went from a U2 disciple to a U2 defector somewhere in between Achtung Baby! and the new millennium. I can’t give you the exact discography, but it started to slip somewhere in the 90s. After wearing out the laser on my CD player spinning War, Unforgettable Fire, Joshua Tree & Rattle & Hum over and over and over – I found Achtung to be interesting. It had a few very good songs and many mediocre ones. Even more interesting and even less entertaining was Zooropa – which I attributed to The Edge needing to flex his electronica muscles and simply tiring of writing in the U2 formula. Even less interesting and extremely less entertaining was Pop. I like to think I am culturally savvy enough to get the satire on the media-overload, glam-show mega-pop-star thing they were doing – but in the end, I still need the music to be good. It stopped being good. I stopped buying U2.

A friend told me early this year to reconsider. The new U2 disc was great, she claimed. Now this friend also owns Creed and Matchbox 20, so I was still reluctant. But what did I have to lose…the disc was still fairly new so Tower was only mugging the public $13 or $14. I bought it. I like it. I really like it. Not just because they’ve gotten back to basics – that sounds too much like a cliché. But they’ve stopped trying to impress me with their innovation and their "new’ sound and gotten back to what I think they do best – write great simple songs. Bono’s elegant, spare poetic license shines through on gems like "In a Little While," "New York," "Grace" and "Stuck in a Moment." And when they decide to crank it up on a few other notable tunes, it is unfettered but also uncomplicated – just a rocking 4-piece band from Ireland leaving it all on the floor. So if you’ve ever liked U2, you’ll like this disc. If you once loved U2 and had a change of heart, this disc will bring you back on their side. If you’ve always loved U2, you’re like most of the people I joined at MSG this past Tuesday night.

I have to say that I’ve never seen a band so "adored" on stage since I saw Paul McCartney at Giants Stadium. The entire crowd hangs on every word, every note – it makes for an extremely intimate feeling even among 25,000 people. Some highlights from the show: "With or Without You" played almost entirely with Gibson feedback; great heavy rocking versions of "Pride" (do white kids even understand this song they know every word to?) and "New Years Day;" and the incredible display that accompanied "Bullet the Blue Sky," which started with that damn filthy ape Charlton Heston plastered on the video screens and ended with a disturbing strobe dance where Bono waved his light like madman chanting "Anyman/MarkChapman" in a hypnotic frenzy. I hope some of the AR faithful get to see this tour – it made me feel good about paying U2 again.

Man, sometimes Armchair Reviews freaks me right out. Glenn's review is so dead-on, I feel like I could have written it myself. All I'll add is that when I saw U2 here in Chicago in May, I'd say the adoration was going both ways. Every time we cheered Bono and the boys, I felt like they were embracing us right back.