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U2 - No Line On The Horizon
| Drownedinsound |
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Once upon a time hating all things U2, and particularly outspoken frontman Bono, became something of an international pastime. Then, around the back end of summer 2000, they re-emerged amidst a froth of pseudo teen-angst metal wannabees and semi-acoustic dullards with 'Beautiful Day', arguably their best single for at least a decade and suddenly it was cool to like U2 again. Almost immediately, budding musicians were falling under their influence like it was 1983 over again and bands were formed as a result. From the obvious wide-angle pretenders to their stadium rock crown such as The Killers and Editors to the more aloof but no less inspired grandiose alt.rock of The National and The Stills, all hold a torch to some degree or another in honour of U2. Their last world tour, four years ago, had a list as long as both arms of supposedly cool bands vying to support them; indeed their show on said tour at the City of Manchester Stadium in May 2005 was undoubtedly the best of its kind I've ever witnessed. Relevance it seemed, and ultimately acceptance from a whole new generation brought up on Britpop and its subsequent offspring was theirs for the taking. An effortless task made all the more easier thanks to the zeitgeist and its new wave of guitar bands making giant steps of their own in their masters wake. The next step was always going to be a testing one though for U2. Often accused of sticking rigidly to the same formula in the early part of their career, they spent the next decade hellbent on proving they were up for any type of challenge imaginable, whether it involved phoning world leaders onstage during the outro to 'With Or Without You', or musically trying to re-invent themselves via a succession of differing producers such as Flood and Howie B not to mention dalliances with various genres from dance to delta blues and experimental noise that defies categorisation....full text |
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| Telegraph |
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Coldplay may have conquered the Grammys a few weeks ago, but the ceremony opened with a warning shot from the world's premier rock band, a dazzling performance by U2 of their comeback single Get on Your Boots which shouted out their return. Their 12th studio album is, like its immediate predecessors, less a record than an event, breathtaking in its ambition and its shimmering, mesmerising and sometimes outright volcanic sound. Within the band's army of production staff, Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois were, this time, the key figures, integral to the writing and playing of the music, while Steve Lillywhite streamlined the sound for mass consumption. Auspiciously, this is the same backroom line-up that made The Unforgettable Fire (1984) and Achtung Baby (1991). Like those, No Line on the Horizon is a bold, beautiful and highly speculative re-imagining of U2's music. Such a spirit is palpable, as the title track rumbles off, like a space rocket making its awe-inspiring ascent from a launch pad. Against a backdrop of swirling Eno synth, skittering rhythm, and, in the chorus, Pixies-style guitar twanging, Bono sings at an exhilarating stretch, sometimes falsetto, about a mysterious, free-spirited girl. "She said, 'Time is irrelevant, it's not linear'," he yowls, introducing a recurrent theme of women holding the answers in man's crumbling world....full text |
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| Culturebully |
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A new record by U2 is never really going to sneak up on anybody, so even the leak of No Line On The Horizon earlier this week was greeted with fanfare and much discussion within the blogosphere. There are always plenty of promotional bells and whistles associated with an imminent U2 album, as well as a guaranteed asinine comment or two by Bono in the lead-up to the release date—this time it’s “If this isn’t our best album, we’re irrelevant.” Well Bono, it’s not your best album, and you know it, but you’re never really going to be irrelevant either, and you know that as well. Of course, he probably repeats this little mantra to himself every night before he goes to bed anyway, so irrelevancy is not something Bono or his ego will ever let happen. But my trouble with this record doesn’t start with Bono, it starts with the fact that U2 are repeatedly trying to get away with things we’ve already heard from them musically, and I don’t know if it’s because they don’t know how to sound any different at this point in their career, or if they simply think most of their fans can’t remember the riffs and arrangements from their earlier records to call them out on this rehash. Well, I’m calling them out. The record begins strong enough with the title track, but layered underneath the insufferable yelping of Bono is a riff that sounds suspiciously close to the one the Edge used, albeit to a less successful effect, on “The Fly.” It’s subtle, but it’s there. Maybe it’s because the Edge’s guitar style is so recognizable and distinct at this point that even he can’t get away from cribbing some of his best riff’s. I mean, so many other bands are doing it, right? But to me, as a longtime U2 fan, I view it as laziness and lack of inspiration. “Magnificent,” while being a good song (and perhaps the best track on the record), essentially recycles the riff from “Where The Streets Have No Name.” And “Moment Of Surrender” basically uses the backing rhythm of “Tryin’ To Throw My Arms Around The World” to drive the song along. That’s not to say that these songs don’t have value on their own, but U2 has obviously been influenced by themselves and what got them here to such an extent that they struggle to come up with anything truly original anymore. Plus, when you add lyrics as clichéd as “It’s not if I believe in love, if love believes in me,” and one of my pet peeve’s “Punching in the numbers at the ATM Machine”—Bono, and everyone, the M stands for machine, please don’t be redundant. So when you add all of those factors up, a song that certainly has the potential to be stirring and meaningful loses all of it’s impact on me....full text |
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