Something for everyone - PLAYBACK

There’s a little something for every U2 fan in the band’s latest album, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, dubbed as a return-to-roots, back-to-basics CD.

A lot of their old fans were relieved at the more straight ahead playing in the new work, dispensing with the techno flirtations and mass marketing of their last studio album, Pop.

Paradoxically, like all other U2 albums, this one is different from the rest. It does not have the brooding brilliance of their acclaimed masterpiece, The Joshua Tree, nor does it have the reckless exuberance of War.

In its predilection for the unembellished sound, the band seems content to build around simple chord progressions, making the new work perhaps closer in spirit to the studio cuts from the 1988 double album, Rattle and Hum.

Admittedly, some of U2’s veteran fans were a bit teary-eyed upon hearing the searing opening chords of the first cut, and first single and MTV off the CD, Beautiful Day.

It serves more than a hint of what’s in store for the patient listener who through the years has had to suffer through vocalist Bono’s various excesses and the band’s occasional forays into self-righteous melancholy.

Beautiful Day is also a reminder that a good band can never run out of room to grow in its own time.

There is not a weak cut on the CD, and the generally unanimous critical acclaim will bear this out. From Stuck in a Moment, the light-hearted tune about keeping one’s sense of humor intact despite the odds, to Grace, a song that revolves around a bass line –much like Pop’s Playboy Mansion –the band never falters.

In many ways they are still the angry young men that they were when they first hit the scene, although now certainly a bit more mellow and with some slack for the more laidback turn of guitar phrase.

As expected from a band of their stature, U2 comes up with the obligatory socially conscious, politically correct anthem, Walk On, which is dedicated to Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

It’s from this song where the album gets its title, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and just like the other cuts can in its best moments truly be inspiring.

Walk On is a song about fortitude and moving on, of growing up in one’s own time but also realizing how one can never look back, not even in anger.

One may get an idea of how gracefully these guys have aged through the song, In a Little While. As usual, the Edge’s guitar playing remains on the cutting edge, compelling without being flashy, and Bono’s vocals in the song has a growl to it, almost sounding like a black man.

In a Little While has U2 exploring their musical roots well, knowing how the blues is still the wellspring of much modern music.

On the other hand, the acoustic and radio-friendly Wild Honey has the band in Rolling Stones-like mode, the line separating Britain and Ireland blurred further.

Those still looking for a dance number would not be disappointed, as Elevation has enough of a funky, bouncy beat but minus the techno.

When I Look at the World serves as a chaser to Peace on Earth, the tandem cannot but be listened to one after another. The two songs are an indication that U2 never stops asking the existential questions, with just the right amount of tenderness and humility.

In New York, the band assures us the city is as much a place as a comfort zone of the mind, where one’s art can keep a respectable distance from varied intruders.

A good number of songs on the new album rank right up there with their previous best work, such as A Sort of Homecoming and Pride (In the Name of Love) from The Unforgettable Fire, or Where the Streets Have No Name and With or Without You from The Joshua Tree.

U2 is now playing to an entirely different generation, yet without forgetting their original fans. They’ve been playing for around 20 years, and the sound they put together is well-fleshed out, something that is possible only when the next guy can second-guess the other musically, making the sum of their parts greater than the whole and one step ahead of the competition.

To its credit, U2 has managed to stick together, unlike that other brilliant band of the same generation, REM, which already lost its drummer. Closer to home, U2’s influence extends to many bands, including the lately resurrected Dawn and the post-Bamboo RiverMaya.