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整理人: (2000-10-24 12:21:04), 站内信件
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U2's tenth studio album and third masterpiece, All That You Can't Leav
e Behind, is all about the simple melding of craft and song. Their fir
st masterpiece, 1987's The Joshua Tree, imagined cathedrals of ecstasy
; their second, 1991's Achtung Baby, banged around fleabag hotels of a
gony. But on All That You Can't Leave Behind, U2 distill two decades o
f music-making into the illusion of effortlessness usually only possib
le from veterans. The album represents the most uninterrupted collecti
on 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 tryi
ng to find a decent melody," Bono sings with soulful patience in "Stuc
k 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 coul
d sing like angels and move like the devil. They have always known dev
outly 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-oriente
d hummable songs of their first albums, which warmed up New Wave's chi
lly airs, to the largesse of their War-period arena performances, to t
heir engagement with the geniuses of U.S. roots music, through to thei
r itchy recastings, on Achtung Baby, of transcontinental love and pani
c. This restlessness reached a high point in 1997, when U2 released Po
p, 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 -- whethe
r reflective but swinging, like "Wild Honey," or poised, then pouncing
, like "Beautiful Day" -- honors a tune so refined that each seems lik
e 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 wit
h 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 persever
ance 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 a
bout the plight of a fraying couple; when Bono glimpses "the shadow be
hind 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 u
rgency.
All That You Can't Leave Behind gets serious about simplicity. The son
gs aren't obscured by excessive production, but the band doesn't commi
t the common sin of boring people silly in the name of scaling back. T
he Edge's guitars are even more self-effacing than usual, showing up o
nly as conveyors of accent and texture. On "In a Little While," Edge,
bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen sink deeply into an Al G
reen whisper-groove, a feat of complex plainness. On the very London p
op tune "When I Look at the World," Christmassy synths and choruses ac
hieve an earthy focus, as Bono taps the silver at the top end of his v
oice.
U2 are no longer idealistic kids. In "New York," the album's penultima
te moment, Bono sings as a man in "midlife crisis," desperately drawn
to that city's unique brew of noise and reason, chaos and sensation. S
cattered 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 Al
l That You Can't Leave Behind, the drama of that search exists right i
n the music itself, in the tension between rage and gentleness. On "Gr
ace," Bono highlights a girl who "makes beauty out of ugly things." Al
l 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? (RS
853)
JAMES HUNTER
--
你说这班车可以把我送到天国去,怎么我觉得我在一步步接近地狱。
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