U2: All That You Can't Leave Behind

HAVING SPENT the majority of the past decade searching for ways to rejuvenate the jaded stadium-rock formula — as much for their own benefit as that of their audience — U2, with All That You Can't Leave Behind, seem to have reneged on their courageous experimental tendencies. It's the opposite route to that taken by Radiohead with Kid A: gone are the Krautrock riffs, the left-field disco excursions, the ambient noodlings and the juddering big-beat cataracts; in their place are a dozen songs whose relatively straightforward guitar-rock shapes and readily hummable tunes could easily have come from their Joshua Tree heyday.