U2: All That You Can’t Leave Behind on CD

What does a band do when they’ve conqured the world twice over?, With their brand of heartfelt rock underpinned by a spirituality and conscience that – in recent years – has also embraced irony and self-deprication, U2 enter the 21st Century with their first new release since 1997’s coolly-received Pop.

The once-invincible quartet from Dublin had finally experienced the first hiccup of a career that began at the end of the 1970s. Having grown from a cult band in the early 80s to major success with their albums War and Under A Blood Red Sky in 1983, they moved away from the banner-waving anthems of yore and enlisted Brain Eno to conjure up a more atmospheric and evocative sound.

The Unforgettable Fire (1984) and, especially, 1987’s The Joshua Tree, took them to the very apex of world domination. U2 were ubiquitous in the second half of that decade, a byword for hugely successful modern rock. Indeed, they were quite possibly instigtators of the “alternative mainstream” that would soon include R.E.M. and Nirvana.

From those giddy heights, the band almost pushed the self-destruct button with 1988’s indulgent, self-mythologising Rattle & Hum project. Their ever-present infatuation with Americana went into overdrive, on both the film and its accompanying album, as U2’s identity was swamped in an avalanche of iconoclastic imagery and referencing.

While as a homage to the spirit and legends of rock’s history it was still fairly potent, it did little to further their reputation. Rattle & Hum suffered from the outbreak of worthiness that plagued the music scene in the immediate aftermath of Live Aid. In Britain, it enjoyed a surprisingly brief residence in the charts despite the album’s sensational opening-week sales of 350,000 copies….a record at the time.

A change was needed, and a change is precisely what the band engineered. The term “engineered” is deliberately used, since Achtung Baby was a very conscious effort to banish the excesses which had crept in. Released at the tail-end of 1991, it was a mighty album in all aspects. U2 sounded by turns re-energized and battlescarred, the lyrics drawn from a more personal kind of emotional pain – mostly the relationship difficulties of guitarist The Edge.

Whereas on When Love Comes To Town (the collaboration with BB King from Rattle & Hum) they were simply playing the Blues, now they really had them. The intensity of Achtung Baby was also in the music itself, brooding and often explosive industrial rock one minute (The Fly), achingly mournful the next (One). It was an album that gave U2 a creative second wind, while their standing within the industry and media skyrocketed as a result.

The remainder of the 90s saw U2 flirting with experimentation. 1993’s Zooropa was largely conceived during the tour for Achtung Baby (dubbed “Zoo TV”), and as makeweight albums go it’s one of the best. In direct contrast to its predecessor, Zooropa was more spontaneous and playful. The Zoo TV shows were ground-breaking displays of a new type of concert experience, and that energy had clearly seeped into the album. U2 were comprehensively reborn, a band now obssessed with the present, the future of society and possibilties for technology rather than the ghost of Elvis and mythology of the Delta Blues.

In 1995, a more esoteric venture with Brian Eno was released under the name of Passengers. Featuring contributions to movie soundtracks both real and imagined, it was an interesting diversion – and with Miss Sarajevo in particular, a quite beautiful diversion.

However, a leopard can never truly change its spots and just as they had done before, U2 fell into the trap of self-indulgence.

Pop, taken on its own merits, is in fact an excellent album – even a very good U2 one. Discotheque and Mofo expanded upon the infiltration of techno flavourings to mesmerising effect while Gone, Staring At The Sun and If God Will Send His Angels were all fine songs.

Yet something was missing this time around. The band had also played the irony card rather too often and too enthusiastically, to the point where any novelty in the sight of the once almost po-faced rock troubadors embracing cutting-edge culture, and poking fun at the utter ridiculousness of it all, had worn terribly thin.

So to the new album, All That You Can’t Leave Behind. A perfect title, as it neatly encapsulates both the musical content of the record, and also the band’s current predicament. For U2’s past has caught up with them, the basic four-piece approach of their early years revisited if not exactly recaptured. No longer spotty adolescents with raw ability and burning ambition, but elder statesmen of the rock aristocracy, the clash between old and new, past and present, makes All That You Can’t Leave Behind their most compelling album since Achtung Baby.

Opening with the Number 1 single Beautiful Day, a track that’s not a million miles away from the celebratory rush of their early-80s work, U2 then glide effortlessly through a diverse range of styles. Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of might seem on paper to be another typically smart-arse exercise, yet in reality it’s a soulful song with an admirably restrained production. Likewise the album’s original closing track Grace, and to a lesser extent Peace On Earth – the latter betraying a few Pop-esque tendencies.

New York, In A Little While and When I Look At The World are less immediate, but do grow on repeated listening. Wild Honey is an intially serviceable acoustic rock strum raised to greater levels by a sublime chorus, and Walk On is swirling, classic-period U2 – to this album what Gone was to Pop.

Kite delves into the downbeat, confessional territory of Achtung Baby‘s more sombre moments with equally effective consequences. U2 are often at their best when they drop the facade, lower the tempo and expose the dark soul of their music.

Elevation – the track they performed recently on their first studio Top Of The Pops appearance in almost 20 years – is a simple but joyous guitar workout, and would make a great 3rd or 4th single from All That You Can’t Leave Behind.

That said, singles as an entity in themselves are virtually redundant nowadays for an act such as U2, other than providing impetus for extra album sales. They will be judged upon the amount of copies the album manages to shift in comparison with previous releases, rather than the chart peaks of each single. Pop yielded no fewer than five Top 15 hits, yet total sales in the UK for the album barely reached 400,000…..by some distance U2’s worst seller since their breakthrough with October in 1981.