Artist: U2
Label: Mercury Records
Release: 2009
Length: 53.44
Rating: 3.5/5
“No Line On The Horizon”, the new U2 studio album, is of course an event that, one way or another, shakes up the “rock mainstream” turf good and proper and tickles the currents of the music industry. Who would even dare stick their tongue out and show their horns to one of the commercially most successful rock bands in rock history? When U2 proved with “How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb” that they’d truly fallen in love again with the guitar sound, and “re-invented” (rediscovered) it, the one we missed so badly after the band lost its identity when it shook that “Pop” record out of its system, we could finally breathe a real sigh of relief. Let them make their money, let them be the biggest, as long as their sound keeps that rock smell! I don’t want to float the theory that “All That You Can Leave Behind” was maybe written under the pressure of frustration over searching for a lost identity in the “post-Pop” era, but “How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb” didn’t bring the band any progress. With it, U2 just put out one more album to please the crowd hungry for the classic guitar sound of good old U2
So where does “No Line On The Horizon” finally fit into this story, where does it jump onto the scene? This is a moment when the band found itself in a relaxed state, with no outside pressure, with no need for a cautious reaction to making two albums with pretty much the same end result, which goes for the sequence of “How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb” and “All That You Can Leave Behind”. Instead, we can say U2 exhaled and caught some fresh air, which allows for more sonic and stylistic maneuvering.
What we have here is, I’d say, one of the most subtle moments in U2’s post-millennium history. Not the most subtle, but taken as a whole, “No Line On The Horizon” carries that feeling further than any other of the “post-2000” U2 albums. Largely thanks to the superior Eno/Lanois production. But let’s take it from the top.
The album doesn’t offer the listener an instant hunt for potential hits, the kind U2 always line up whenever a new album drops. Instead, it surprises you with the fact that even after several listens there’s really no point that lodges itself in your memory. This is an album that takes a bit longer to grow on your ears than the average U2 album (we’re talking U2 in the new millennium).
The confusingly stumbling, dancey Get You Boots, with Bono’s pretty jittery vocal figure and annoyingly pushy showboating, is actually one of the album’s bigger detours, the place where it smells most of sweet pop. The track before it, I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight (oh damn, can anyone still come up with longer and sillier titles?), breaks deeper new ground on the record, only there the whole thing works much more cohesively, with an effective magnification of U2 minimalism, which the guys can thank the big producer names behind the knobs in the studio for.
The first half of the record is a lot stronger than what follows after Get Your Boots. The way the album unfolds is distinctive right from the start, with the subtle title track and the first successful dynamic leap in mood, followed by the guitar-driven, hit-“ready” Magnificent, which justifies its purpose in every respect, though without the impact of something like Beautiful Day. After it comes the album’s peak in Moment Of Surrender, the longest track on the record, though that’s not why. The band simply managed to create a combination of lead motifs laid together so that the structure grows atmospherically from second to second, reaching its climax in the chorus. The dynamic ebb and flow in it is outstanding.
More boredom creeps in with the follow-up, the rather watery Stand Up Comedy. FEZ-Being Born, with its subtle expressive power, successfully brings back the energy of the title track, except it can’t take its place as the album opener. The band tries to stir up some dreamy energy in this stretch of the album with the louder, livelier Breathe, which in the pre-chorus even smells “Rattle And Hum-esque”, while White As Snow sketches out some of Bono’s Yahweh preacher energy in the chorus melody. The album’s closing stretch brings an excellent atmospheric turning point, from the lively Breathe to Cedars Of Lebanon, where Bono rules with a half “a capella” whisper in the verses and builds yet another of the album’s subtler moments, a good reminder that U2 have always done best when they offered less. The Breathe and Cedars Of Lebanon pairing delivers an enormously powerful expressive moment on the album, which the U2 brand badly needs.
Less is more, and it works well for the band this time too. One of the finest examples of building a song on just a few notes is Unknown Cellar, made fully credible by a stronger chorus melody. “No Line On The Horizon” is thus a somewhat calmer album, without any pushy raucousness or direct hit-hunting. In terms of confession, U2 were never famous for any special expressive artistic depth in their own artistry, which makes the album’s production all the more important, masterfully and magnificently optimizing the sonic minimalism on which Bono Vox’s unique stamp finally gets built into the U2 figure.
So U2 have released yet another album that can’t boast any upward artistic evolution, but instead enjoys calm, carefree relaxation. There are more subtle moments if you compare the U2 albums released after 2000. It’s a different album from the previous two, but then again, not all that different..But don’t get me wrong. The special creative spark has obviously left U2. It’s hard to find a common thread running through the songs, like the one that tied the albums together in U2’s best days, when the band justified its unique voice as the child of the Irish revolution with every record! What saved U2 this time was above all the excellent producer duo of Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, who pulled the maximum out of a quartet that is “drunk on fame and laid-back”!
Lineup
Bono Vox – vocals
The Edge – guitar
Adam Clayton – bass
Larry Mullen – drums
Production
Brian Eno & Daniel Lanois
Tracklist
1. No Line On The Horizon (4:12)
2. Magnificent (5:24)
3. Moment Of Surrender (7:24)
4. Unknown Caller (6:03)
5. I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight (4:14)
6. Get On Your Boots (3:25)
7. Stand Up Comedy (3:49)
8. FEZ-Being Born (5:17)
9. White As Snow (4:41)
10. Breathe (5:00)
11. Cedars Of Lebanon (4:13)
