Listen to me: Chan, the critic, gives his slant on the best holiday gift ideas

U2: All That You Can't Leave Behind (Interscope)
 
The Pop album, which took four years to complete, signaled what might be the biggest decline in U2's popularity in its 20-year history. The band desperately tried to cross the electronic-rock boundary by incorporating more techno elements into the classic Joshua Tree- style songwriting. Somewhere along the way the band forgot what U2's music is all about - drum, bass, guitar and Bono.

Apparently Bono started to believe his media-hyped credibility and became a laughable crusader for Third World countries, which reached a pinnacle with the NetAide 2000 benefit concert debacle.

Underneath the fly-designed sunglasses and the half-smoked Cuban cigars, he was without content. U2 was still credible but lacked commercially viable music to support its political, religious and social rhetoric. The message was murky and the music seemed uninspired, without even one redeeming hit song.

To save face, the band had only one reasonable option, simplicity.

That brings us to the latest album All That You Can't Leave Behind which re-establishes U2 as a four-piece rock-based band.

"Beautiful Day," the first single, kicks and hollers from the depths of the band's early prepubescent hits such as "Gloria" and "I Will Follow." The lyrics speak about a man who loses everything but has never felt happier, according to Bono. How fitting that it should introduce and set the tone for the album.

On every song, there are hints of the band members embracing all levels of happiness, a far cry from the doldrums of the last two albums Pop and Zooropa, which were perhaps their most decadent releases.

"All that you fashioned/All that you lived/All that you killedÖ All that you can't leave behind," Bono confesses in "Walk On," a song that would play over the airwaves if the band's plane ever goes down.

Somber numbers such as "Grace," "Kite" and "When I Look At the World" rise above the usual mediocrity of most slow-tempo rock ballads. The band has adopted the principal of "it's not the message, but the style of the substance."

This article appeared in its entirety in the Oct. 30 issue of The Daily Forty-Niner.

CD Reviews

Christina Aguilera: My Kind of Christmas (RCA)

Christmas albums have become as commonplace these days as teenybopper singers. So "My Kind of Christmas" should not surprise music listeners as, sadly, holiday songs are no longer protected from such atrocities.

Aguilera, who released Spanish re-workings of her songs on the "Mi Reflejo" album last month, apparently wants to fill-up the local Wal-Mart with yet another worthless release.

The idea of people buying new Christmas albums is blasphemous considering the Carpenters, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and the Peanuts gang have carved the most significant contributions to holiday-themed albums. Aguilera is most likely attempting to bring a hip appeal and R&B swing to the holiday classics, but there is a fine line between modest re-workings of songs and the diva stance she takes for this release. That fact makes me fume.

My Kind of Christmas features a by-the-books list of songs such as "Oh Holy Night," "Merry Christmas Baby," "Silent Night" and "The Christmas Song" performed in the usual vocal bravado that is so common with teenage artists.

This article appeared in its entirety in the Oct. 23 issue of The Daily Forty-Niner.

Marilyn Manson: Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) (Nothing/Interscope)

After dilly-dallying in glam rock with Mechanical Animals and losing much of his gender-bending, lipstick-eating Goth fans, the brouhaha that usually surrounds Manson's Bible-bashing music has diminished.

With the ever-so-cleverly-titled Holy Wood, Manson AKA Brian Warner, has succumbed to the same demons that created Antichrist Superstar, ­ companion music for reading the Satanic Bible.

The epic endeavor is broken into four parts: A: In the Shadow; D: The Androgyne, A: Of Red Earth; and M: The Fallen. If one squints at the right angle the intended spelling of "Adam," crystallizes. One might question if the subliminal footnote to God's first man is clever or contrived.

On songs such as "Target Audience," "Cruci-Fiction in Space" and the first single "Disposable Teens," he tears through the glam rock barrier separating him from Superstar. The music gathers strength through the industrial grind that propelled his most famous song "The Beautiful People."

Nonetheless, hearing Manson's scream about loving guns in "The Love Song" and his increasingly inaudible snarl on "The Death Song" leaves me wondering if there is life for him after Superstar.

This article appeared in its entirety in the Nov. 13 issue of The Daily Forty-Niner.

Chan Tran is print journalism major at Cal State Long Beach.