1. Beautiful Day

2. Stuck In A Moment

3. Elevation

4. Walk On

5. Kite

6. In A Little While

7. Wild Honey

8. Peace On Earth

9. When I Look At The World

10. New York

11. Grace

Rolling Stone

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 reining 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 through 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 that 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?

Amazon

The foursome come roaring out of the blocks with their latest collection. The album's first single, "Beautiful Day," raced to the No. 1 slot on the U.K. singles charts and received a similar rapturous reception stateside. From its shimmering preamble to its sweeping, infectious chorus, it perfectly stakes out the middle ground between the anthemic U2 of the '80s and the more grounded group of the '90s. With Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno sharing production chores again after having taken a break with Pop, the U2 team enters the new millennium with their lineup--and mission—intact.

If U2 hadn't used the title already, "A Sort of Homecoming" might have suited this, their 10th studio album. All That You Can't Leave Behind sounds, at various points, like any or all of U2's previous albums, as if the band is sending postcards back from a protracted ramble through previously conquered territories. The euphoric opening track, "Beautiful Day," reintroduces Edge's signature delay-laden guitar, which has been pretty much absent since The Unforgettable Fire . Elsewhere, the gospel stylings of Rattle and Hum resurface on "Stuck in a Moment," and the deranged, Prodigy-influenced dance textures that characterized 1997's Pop crop up on "Elevation." None of which suggest that this commendably restless bunch is running out of ideas. Having spent the '90s making three of the most bizarre and adventurous albums ever delivered by a stadium-rock band (the consecutive masterpieces Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop), it's as if they're now trying to figure out what is the one particular thing they've always done best. Based on the evidence presented here, their forte remains a facility for making the epic statement alongside Bono's increasing lyrical intimacy: "Walk On" and "Peace on Earth" are two of the best things he's ever written or sung. All That You Can't Leave Behind confirms that U2's laurels are still making them itch.

All Music

Nearly ten years after beginning U2 Mach II with their brilliant seventh album Achtung Baby, U2 eases into their third phase with 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind. The title signifies more than it seems, since the group sifts through its past, working with Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, all in an effort to construct a classicist U2 album. Thankfully, it's a rock record from a band that absorbed all the elastic experimentation, studio trickery, dance flirtations, and genre bending of Achtung, Zooropa, and Pop — all they've shed is the irony. U2 chooses not to delve as darkly personal as they did on Achtung or Zooropa, yet they also avoid the alienating archness of Pop, returning to the generous spirit that flowed through their best '80s records. On that level, All may be reminiscent of The Joshua Tree, but this is a clever and craftsmanlike record, filled with nifty twists in the arrangements, small sonic details, and colors. U2 take subtle risks, such as their best pure pop song ever with "Wild Honey"; they're so self-confident they effortlessly write their best anthem in years with "Beautiful Day"; they offer the gospel-influenced "Stuck in a Moment," never once lowering it to the schtick it would have been on Rattle & Hum. Like any work from craftsmen, All That You Can't Leave Behind winds up being a work of modest pleasures, where the way the verse eases into the chorus means more than the overall message, and this is truly the first U2 album where that sentiment applies — but there is genuine pleasure in their craft, for the band and listener alike.