Edge squints into a compact mirror, checking the detail on that moustache. Bono ponders Third World debt and a future missive to Kofi Annan. Adam Clayton leafs through the latest Italian Vogue ? wow, a Versace pollution mask ? Larry Mullen Jr thinks about Passengers Original Soundtracks 1 and scowls. Possibly?Only U2 themselves know what went on inside the lemon. The rest of us can just speculate. Every evening on their 1997-'98's PopMart tour they clambered into the windowless pod. Accompanied by the din of unseen stadium crowds, it would hover across the stage before splitting open to reveal the band. Locked in there night after night, what did U2 talk about? That next time they should make an old-fashioned rock'n'roll record and leave the big yellow thing at home? Possibly.
U2's last album, Pop, was a bumpy ride, inspired, but overreaching and messy. Discothèque deserves a place in the Top 20 Greatest U2 Songs Of All Time, but it's a brave soul who returns to Please or Wake Up Dead Man by their own volition. Worryingly the latter trailed off with a dour Bono intoning, "Jesus, Jesus help me I'm alone in this world and a fucked-up world it is too". Just how bad is it to be the singer in U2? Never mind, the group had been felled by pre-millennium tension three years early. Poor lambs.
Thank God then that they've perked up. All That You Can't Leave Behind's first shot across the bows is the single Beautiful Day. Its bobbing, spacey intro cues up a toppling, familiar guitar pattern. Bursting with optimism, the lasting impression is of the singer gambolling Julie Andrews-style across rolling hills, arms outstretched, glad to be alive. But all the while singing in a grown-up voice and reminding us that this is the work of 40-year-olds with the life experiences to match. The choral interlude two minutes and 44 seconds in is a flash of pure genius, and Beautiful Day makes for what Neil Tennant once called a great "ice rink record" ? in that it probably sounds wonderful when pumped out of distorted speakers at a provincial skating rink. Only an utter bastard then would mention the ghost of A-ha's The Sun Always Shines On TV passing through the room when Bono roars "Touch me, take me to that other place." Sorry.
U2's new-found zest for life is still undiminished on Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of. 1998's Number 3 hit Sweetest Thing was a charming pop song and there are echoes of it here. Over a lilting, soulful piano figure Bono quips, "I'm just trying to find a decent melody", despite having already found one that's more than adequate.
Elevation is a reminder then that U2's brave new world isn't exclusively hearts and flowers. The chainsaw guitars are left over from Achtung Baby and it has the unusual distinction of being the first rock song since Mercury Rev's Holes to mention moles. In this case the little nocturnal blighters are "digging in a hole, digging up my soul". Edge slips his leash halfway through, suggesting it will sound monumental live.
Throughout the album, the lyrics return to themes of redemption, of rebirth. "I'm not afraid of anything in this world, there's nothing you can throw at me that I haven't already heard," Bono insists during Stuck In A Moment? Perhaps the ain't-life-grand theme is a by-product of U2's rediscovered confidence in what they do; maybe the singer has negotiated some personal crisis and emerged on top. Either way it invests much of All That You Can't Leave Behind with an upbeat quality that partners the music perfectly.
Then they come within a hair's breadth of screwing it up. Walk On might have been left off '84's The Unforgettable Fire. Jangly Edge guitar fill here; single-note piano motif there; big Bono bellow everywhere. The webcam in the studio would surely have captured the band laughing guiltily at the unbridled U2-ness of it all. It's heartfelt certainly but just a tad too obvious. Fifteen years ago, Jim Kerr would have gone down to the crossroads ? in his ladies' leggings and everything ? to sell his soul for this one.
Kite's snoozy melody offers a change of tack and Bono's strongest vocal so far. Chockful of stormy emotion and middle-aged angst ("I'm a ma-a-a-n not a child"), Bono sees it out tackling 21st Century issues and gamely trying to rhyme "new media" with "big idea". The wag. Five songs in and All That You Can't Leave Behind's general tenor is already clear. Pop's clashing soundscapes have been put aside, technology reigned in, and nobody is striving to re-make The Beatles' "White Album". U2 have turned the clock back to doing what U2 used to do. That it's so uncomplicated almost takes time to get used to.
The album's two biggest curveballs are pitched side by side. Spice Girls collaborator Richard Stannard has a hand in the low-key, Motown-ish In A Little While. Edge does a clipped, Ernie Isley thing and Bono gives it his best Smokey Robinson. It could have been horrible but isn't, whizzing by in a charming three-and-a-half minutes and making way for Wild Honey: romantic country-rock, which unlike all other non-Americans playing romantic country-rock isn't trying to be Gram Parsons.
God and his offspring drop by for Peace On Earth, another dogged bid for a Christmas Number 1 (see Pop's If God Will Send His Angels) and another potential stumbling block negotiated. Bono takes Him Upstairs to task and, while there's a sense of revisiting old ground, Peace On Earth wears its sentiments so unselfconsciously that the listener is immediately disarmed. Slipping in on its coat-tails, the squally guitars and widescreen lyrics on When I Look At The World are cast from familiar U2 moulds. But while it taxis along inoffensively enough it never quite manages to get airborne.
New York delivers a truly intimate peek into Bonoworld. The singer recently forked out for an apartment in Manhattan and, like Miami on Pop, it's another song exploring U2's "unquenchable thirst" for America. A needling guitar and Larry Mullen's pattering drums soundtrack the travelogue and Bono's intriguing lyric: "In New York I lost it all to you and your vices/Still, I'm staying on to figure out my midlife crisis/Hit an iceberg in my life/But here I am still afloat." Conclusion: Big Apple consumes Big Man. In contrast, Grace has Bono mopping his brow after all that inner-city/emotional turmoil. Brian Eno seems to have roused himself for this one, pressing various Eno buttons while the others turn in the dictionary definition of understated.
Grace would have been a perfect ending, but the arrival of the non-listed The Ground Beneath Her Feet notches up another little victory. First featured on last year's Million Dollar Hotel soundtrack, the whinnying keyboard figure ? imagine ambient Spaghetti Western music ? and Bono's impassioned "Go lightly down your darkened way" make it one of this album's key moments and a smart, dramatic closer.
Bono's recent dismissal of "the progressive rock lurgy" currently infecting much rock music gave a revealing insight into U2's current mindset. Stepping outside of their natural environment ensured their longevity in the '90s, stepping back in seems to have given them a fresh boost. For all Zooropa and Pop's pushing of the envelope, limiting themselves to rock's core ingredients has given the band a new challenge. Certainly, not since The Joshua Tree have U2 sounded so like U2 but, with songs of this startling calibre, right now being U2 is no bad thing.
Reviewed by Mark Blake
