MattA75's Full Review: No Line On the Horizon by U2
Expectations are a funny thing, especially with music. I think that the lead single for an album ultimately dictates how high expectations are set. Put out something that knocks people on their collective a*ses and expectations rise quickly. Put out something that leaves people scratching their heads, and expectations drop 20,000 leagues under the sea or so.
I start this review this way because it perfectly encapsulates the new U2 album No Line on the Horizon, due out next month. Originally, my hopes and expectations for an album of new U2 music was high. But when the first single, Get On Your Boots, was released, I immediately lowered my expectations. I was right to do so.
No Line on the Horizon aims high but is completely and utterly directionless. Now that their last two albums have sold well and generated hits, they're back into the experimentation that colored their 1990s output in full. Even Zooropa and Pop, as uneven as they are (especially Pop), had a given direction that swirled throughout their respective durations. With the 2000s came a return to basics, which was welcomed by just about every sane U2 fan on earth. The last two albums have been far from perfect, but they both held memorable songs that stuck in your brain. This is what No Line on the Horizon also lacks in a big way.
Get On Your Boots is possibly the least memorable U2 single of all time. The fuzz guitar that permeates the track is ground The Edge has been traipsing for years, and the rest of the track is the kind of trashy electro-Euro-pop the band already tried to make America like and failed miserably (Discotheque anyone?). The lyrics are typically pretentious Bono ("candy floss ice cream, all our kids are screaming") and reveal the type of laziness that has overtaken one of the truly great songwriters of our generation this decade.
The first single should have been Magnificent. This song wouldn't feel out of place on Achtung Baby, but it manages to sound a bit more modern. I'm still not worried about the electronic flourishes that color the song, but lyrically, it's easily Bono's best work here ("I give you back my voice, from the womb my first cry, it was a joyful noise"). Edge's guitar work is splendid, sounding very much like a mix of his 80s and early 90s work, while retaining some soul in his playing.
The track that follows, Moment of Surrender, is way, way, way too long at nearly seven and a half minutes. The intro feels like forever at about 90 seconds, and the reprise of the intro later on in the song also seems to last forever. The song drones on and on in a waltzy like tone and pace, the only redeeming moment of the song coming with Edge's extremely heartfelt solo around the 5:15 mark.
Later on, the band moves onto unadulterated happy pop music on I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight. A mix of Beautiful Day and Sweetest Thing, the song has a tangible energy to it, and it also has the single best lyric on the album ("The right to be ridiculous is something I hold dear"). Bono sounds energized to be singing something upbeat, instead of detached and disinterested as he does on many of these other songs.
Stand Up Comedy has a funky backbeat to it and by far what is Edge's best riff on the entire album. Bono's obsession with the word love continues here, but again, he sounds energized to be singing something somewhat upbeat and hopeful.
Sadly though, that's about it for the good songs on this record. Bassist Adam Clayton, as he did on Pop, shows off considerable talent on just about this entire album. His bass is thick and heavy on many of these songs, it's just too bad no one will want to bother listening to most of them on a regular (or irregular) basis. And part of the reason is the amount of harmonizing they allow Edge to do with Bono. The dude can add something vocally occasionally, but he can't harmonize to save his life, especially with a singer as capable as Bono.
The constant use of keyboard drags down the rocker Breathe, while the dirge that closes the album, Cedars of Lebanon, is one of the most depressing U2 songs ever. This makes Wake Up Dead Man and Please seem downright happy. The other traditional rock ballad is White as Snow, which also lacks the sense of hope that has always made U2's ballads some of their most memorable work.
I can't say I hate the rest of the tracks, but they don't stand out to me either. They're just sort of....there. The one thing you could always count on with a U2 album was a definitive theme or thread. But this album has none. And that would be fine if they had songs that measured up to past output, but they don't. These songs are unmemorable, have way too much going on at times, and the performances (outside of a couple of exceptions) sound mailed in.
This is easily the most disappointing album since Pop, and takes its spot next to that album and the awful October on the list of subpar U2 albums.
Produced by Brian Eno, Danny Lanois, and Steve Lillywhite, sessions for No Line on the Horizon began in Fez, Morocco, and continued at the band s Dubl...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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