NLOTH: Reviews (No Chat!)

Originally posted by Blender
U2
No Line on the Horizon

5 Stars (out of 5)

(Interscope)
Release Date: 3/3/2009

Immodesty fuels a great, alienated album from the universe’s biggest rock band.
Reviewed by Rob Sheffield

“My ego’s not really the enemy,” Bono confides on the new U2 album. “It’s like a small child crossing an eight-lane highway/On a voyage of discovery.” Eight lanes? Keep counting, boyo. All over this record, he paves whole new interstates of ego, with exit ramps darting in and out of every verse, and that’s exactly how it should be. The days are gone when U2 were trying to keep it simple—at this point, the lads have realized that over-the-top romantic grandiosity is the style that suits them, so they come on like the cosmic guitar supplicants they were born to be. No Line on the Horizon is U2’s third killer in a row—by now, it’s bizarre to remember that just 10 years ago, everybody thought they were headed toward the dinosaur band tar pits. But ever since they went from midlife crisis to midlife rejuvenation, with All That You Can’t Leave Behind, they’ve been on a roll. Here, they go for the abstract, Euro vibe of Achtung Baby or The Unforgettable Fire, piling on the cathedral-size keyboards. Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois are back on hand, giving the production a dub-like reverb without quashing the momentum. One song (“Fez—Being Born”) rolls along on the melodic pointillism of minimalist composer Steve Reich; while another (“I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight”) bites the piano hook from Journey’s “Faithfully,” and that gives a rough picture of how far U2 range on Horizon. “Moment of Surrender” is the high point—seven minutes of Bono in gospel mode, lost in the late-night city (“I was speeding on the subway/Through the stations of the cross”), questing for salvation and finding it in Adam Clayton’s bass. The Edge fleshes out the yearning with some piercing crazy-diamond guitar. It’s the kind of gimme-divinity anthem that U2 cut their teeth on, except it really does seem like they’ve gotten better at these songs now that they’ve picked up some bummed-out adult grit. Bono actually sounds scared of something in this song, and whether his nightmares are religious or sexual, the fear gives his voice some heft. Compared to “Moment of Surrender,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” just sounds like a callow kid trying to snag a date at Bible camp. “Unknown Caller” is another vivid picture of spiritual jet lag—usually when rock stars use their cell phones as metaphors, it seems like they got bored at the airport, but this one truly puts on the chill. Bono reaches Bowie-in-Berlin levels of arty alienation (“I had driven to the scene of the accident/And I sat there waiting for me”), while the guitars crackle in the album’s finest Edgemanship. “Get On Your Boots” is a manic low-end rocker a la “Vertigo,” with phased ’70s-style synths, buzzing guitar and a breathless vocal from Bono that brings back fond memories of the days when the Edge tried to rap. (All the talk about “sexy boots,” community, joy, war, Satan and bomb scares—well, it’s typical of the jumble of eroticism, politics and spirituality that defines this album, and, probably, Bono’s BlackBerry. ) The songs get slower and less compelling toward the end; that’s how U2 always pace things. Yet they achieve liftoff in the rockers, especially “No Line on the Horizon” (yet another lonely party girl who wants more than a party) and “Magnificent” (yet another hymn to the powers of love). You can hear Eno’s touch all over: “Moment of Surrender” opens with an organ solo straight from “The Big Ship,” on his 1975 classic Another Green World. But it’s Bono who dominates. He hasn’t crammed in this many words per song in over 10 years—to be specific, since the least-loved item in the U2 catalogue, Pop, the grim, slow, morbid flop they tried and failed to sell as their ironic techno statement. The difference now is that they’re no longer apologizing for their messy emotions or their lofty ambitions. Ego really isn’t their enemy—it’s their instrument, and on No Line on the Horizon they just plug it in and play.

U2:
No Line on the Horizon
[Interscope; 2009]

Rating: 4.2

Why U2? How did these four Irishmen become the blueprint for every band with stadium aspirations? The Edge's churchly guitar chime-- which thrives on the same arena acoustics that can turn otherwise booming bands into mud-- is certainly a factor. So is their weakness for the big gesture-- whether it be a giant lemon, heart, or mouth. And Bono's cathartic mix of modern panacea-- love, God, mass culture-- gives them a reach to the back row and beyond. But, perhaps above all else, the band's restlessness and willingness to challenge both themselves and their patrons is why the Killers, Kanye West, and Coldplay want to be the next U2 and not the next AC/DC. It's why these four Irishmen still represent the punk spirit decades after they emerged from it.

"You've got to balance being relevant and commenting on something that's happening today with trying to attain timelessness," philosophized the Edge in the early 1990s. The quote sounds like rock star bullshit...until you realize that's pretty much what U2 did for 20 years. From 1980 to 2000, it was difficult to tell exactly what the next U2 album would sound like. Briefly: They added atmosphere to new wave, looked for God and found hits, exhumed their rock'n'roll heroes, sent-up those same heroes while losing their religion, and punctured pop via mutated techno. Each move was more audacious than the last-- even 1997 knee-jerk victim Pop saw the world-beating act taking completely unnecessary musical and financial risks in the name of Warholian post-modern pastiche. They then also managed to surprise on 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind by successfully returning to form after shrugging off the notion for so many years. But 2004's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and its subsequent tour were troubling.

That record saw four guys famous for dabbing classic rock into all sorts of impressionistic frames (or dismantling it entirely via Village People costumes) uncomfortably grasping for old-fashioned riffs, when they weren't mindlessly feasting on their own past. It was completely predictable ("City of Blinding Lights"), canned ("Vertigo"), and depressingly Sting-like ("A Man and a Woman"). But the group did little to hide the fact that they were basking in their early-century comeback's afterglow; in concert, in place of the ATYCLB tour's heart-shaped runway was a, um, circle-shaped runway. Still self-aware enough to sense stagnation, the quartet began to work on what would become No Line on the Horizon with new producer Rick Rubin and an imperative to break all those piling U2 trappings once again. As Bono told The New York Times this week: "When you become a comfortable, reliable friend, I'm not sure that's the place for rock'n'roll."

Sixteen years ago, U2 worked a snippet of Public Enemy's "Don't Believe the Hype" into their technologically prescient Zoo TV tour-- perhaps fans should heed that bit of sampled advice right about now. Because while this group of slick talkers may have set out to expand their own definition once more, they've ended up with old collaborators Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois --along with an album that's neither relevant nor timeless.

First single "Get on Your Boots" is a worrisome harbinger-- to call it a mess would be generous. The song combines sub-Audioslave riffs with Escape Club's "Wild Wild West" and sounds more disjointed than the worst Girl Talk rip off. "I don't wanna talk about wars between nations-- not right now!" claims Bono on the song, before extolling the virtues of tight leather boots. His off-the-cuff attitude and delivery suggests a cheekiness missing from U2's music for more than a decade, but it's a red herring. While other tracks like "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" and "Stand Up Comedy" feature knowing lines that examine the singer's faults and hypocrisy, the album is heavy on half-assed word-salad characterizations and the sort of meaningless platitudes Bono used to be so great at (barely) avoiding. And there's a strong theme of resignation running through the record; whereas many classic U2 tracks have come from Bono's struggle with faith and certainty, he seems content to give up agency on songs like "Moment of Surrender" and "Unknown Caller". "I've found grace inside a sound," he sings on "Breathe", and the line seems like a cop-out from a man who spent so much time struggling with salvation.

Meanwhile, the album's ballyhooed experimentation is either terribly misguided or hidden underneath a wash of shameless U2-isms (the three-note ring Edge nicks from "Walk On" for "Unknown Caller", the "oh oh oh" outro from "Stay" apparently copied and pasted into "Moment of Surrender", etc.). While Eno used to work his unique sound-bobbles and ambiance into the fabric of U2 songs, he seems content to offer spacey intros totally disassociated from their accompanying tunes here (see: "Fez - Being Born", "Magnificent"). And oftentimes the band mistakes risk-taking for ill-fated arrangements and decisions. "Surrender"-- reportedly improvised in one seven-minute take-- comes across as lazy indulgence, and the title track's hard-nosed verse is torpedoed by its deflating fart of a hook. As the go-to sonic innovator of the group, the Edge dials in a particularly dispiriting performance throughout; his rare solos usually pack in enough panache to fill stadiums but his bluesy blah of a spotlight on "Surrender" would barely satisfy a single earbud.

"It keeps getting harder. You're playing against yourself and you don't want to lose," Adam Clayton told Q last month. And he's got a point. After nearly 30 years of chart crashing and sell-outs, starting afresh can't be easy. There's only one "One". In a way, U2 spoiled their followers by consistently questioning themselves while writing songs that straddled the personal and collective consciousness. But Horizon is clearly playing not to lose-- it's a defensive gesture, and a rather pitiful one at that.

Ryan Dombal, March 2, 2009

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/149460-u2-no-line-on-the-horizon

Originally posted by All
3 stars (out of 5)
By Stephen Thomas Erlewine

A rock & roll open secret: U2 care very much about what other people say about them. Ever since they hit the big time in 1987 with The Joshua Tree, every album is a response to the last -- rather, a response to the response, a way to correct the mistakes of the last album: Achtung Baby erased the roots rock experiment Rattle and Hum, All That You Can't Leave Behind straightened out the fumbling Pop, and 2009's No Line on the Horizon is a riposte to the suggestion they played it too safe on 2006's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. After scrapping sessions with Rick Rubin and flirting with will.i.am, U2 reunited with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois (here billed as "Danny" for some reason), who not only produced The Joshua Tree but pointed the group toward aural architecture on The Unforgettable Fire. Much like All That You Can't and Atomic Bomb, which were largely recorded with their first producer, Steve Lillywhite, this is a return to the familiar for U2, but where their Lillywhite LPs are characterized by muscle, the Eno/Lanois records are where the band take risks, and so it is here that U2 attempts to recapture that spacy, mysterious atmosphere of The Unforgettable Fire and then take it further. Contrary to the suggestion of the clanking, sputtering first single "Get on Your Boots" -- its riffs and "Pump It Up" chant sounding like a cheap mashup stitched together in GarageBand -- this isn't a garish, gaudy electro-dalliance in the vein of Pop. Apart from a stilted middle section -- "Boots," the hamfisted white-boy funk "Stand Up Comedy," and the not-nearly-as-bad-as-its-title anthem "I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight"; tellingly, the only three songs here to not bear co-writing credits from Eno and Lanois -- No Line on the Horizon is all austere grey tones and midtempo meditation. It's a record that yearns to be intimate but U2 don't do intimate, they only do majestic, or as Bono sings on one of the albums best tracks, they do "Magnificent." Here, as on "No Line on the Horizon" and "Breathe," U2 strike that unmistakable blend of soaring, widescreen sonics and unflinching openhearted emotion that's been their trademark, turning the intimate into something hauntingly universal. These songs resonate deeper and longer than anything on Atomic Bomb, their grandeur almost seeming effortless. It's the rest of the record that illustrates how difficult it is to sound so magnificent. With the exception of that strained middle triptych, the rest of the album is in the vein of "No Line," "Horizon," and "Breathe," only quieter and unfocused, with its ideas drifting instead of gelling. Too often, the album whispers in a murmur so quiet it's quite easy to ignore -- "White as Snow," an adaptation of a traditional folk tune, and "Cedars of Lebanon," its verses not much more than a recitation, simmer so slowly they seem to evaporate -- but at least these poorly defined subtleties sustain the hazily melancholy mood of No Line on the Horizon. When U2, Eno, and Lanois push too hard -- the ill-begotten techno-speak overload of "Unknown Caller," the sound sculpture of "Fez-Being Born" -- the ideas collapse like a pyramid of cards, the confusion amplifying the aimless stretches of the album, turning it into a murky muddle. Upon first listen, No Line on the Horizon seems as if it would be a classic grower, an album that makes sense with repeated spins, but that repetition only makes the album more elusive, revealing not that U2 went into the studio with a dense, complicated blueprint, but rather, they had no plan at all.

Originally posted by SundayAs fresh as a debut; is this U2's best studio album yet?

Sunday Telegraph (London), March 02, 2009

By Paul Morley

On their latest album, U2 sound so much like a contemporary version of themselves, and a contemporary pop group full stop, it is fairly breathtaking. No Line on the Horizon is their twelfth, and possibly best, studio album. At least, it's intoxicating enough for fans, if not those irked by U2's inconvenient continuing presence, to consider it their best. It sounds as fresh and vivid as a debut, yet is infused with their very specific, self-conscious experience.

Since their attractively ragged and raging 1980 debut album Boy -- and their last five or six albums could justifiably have been called Man -- they've nimbly resisted becoming a nostalgia act. They've smartly survived numerous shifts in musical fashion, commercial structures and cultural circumstances. They've stayed dreamers and kept faith with the astringent guitar sound of the Clash, Public Image and the Banshees, even as they've become tangled in their own resonating history, success, reputation, power and Bono's unyielding international presence as meddling buddy of the high and mighty.

Unlike the post-punk groups that originally inspired them, they're still around to make themselves up, and negotiate their image, their music and their business, as a group that can play at MTV glamour, reinvent themselves (whatever turbulent technological and cultural changes are happening around them), mix in the bracing, legendary company of Dylan and Springsteen, and make a record that sounds like the group they always were without it seeming like they're just repeating tricks and embarrassingly hanging around long after they've outstayed their welcome.

Cynics annoyed by the unwieldy, do-gooding civic concerns of a pontificating Bono, aggravated by his impertinent, presumptive desire to correct various forces of corruption and ignorance, suspicious of the forensic methods U2 use to remodel themselves, will resent the five-star reviews the record deserves for being a great sounding piece of spectacularly organised, defiantly intimate, sensitively designed and emotionally presented, post-modern showbusiness.

U2 have always been aggressively committed to slicing through cynicism, even as their implacable attention-seeking has given ammunition to those cynics that profoundly doubt something so plush
and propertied can be sincere. What you think of No Line on the Horizon, and the group's sustained act of self-preservation, will reflect whether you consider them a lucid celebration of sincerity or a contrived, swanky forgery. It's down to whether you believe or not -- in the group, and in belief itself.


© Sunday Telegraph, 2009

Originally posted by haytrain:Scans of the Time Magazine review.

(funny that they claim 'Wild Honey' is one of U2's hits over the past few years, and that Zooropa is one of U2's top 3 albums)

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Originally posted by StrongGirl
Reflections on the Horizon

As a new moderator when No Line on the Horizon was released in 2009, I witnessed many passionate conversations on our forum about this album. There was no middle ground. Fans either loved it or despised it. I immediately belonged to the camp who loved it. U2 promised us something different, something special. To me, they delivered exactly that.

I consider ￾1c20Moment of Surrender￾1d20 one of U2￾1920s finest songs and they proved it live. It is a powerful song about a person who has hit rock bottom. Hearing it is an emotionally draining experience every time for me. Adam￾1920s bass on ￾1c20Cedars of Lebanon￾1d20 is remarkable. It sets the mood for the dark atmosphere in this song. ￾1c20White As Snow￾1d20 paints a beautiful image with its lyrics. Their most overtly religious album since October, No Line on the Horizon shares a special bond with that early work. ￾1c20Magnificent￾1d20 is the older and enlightened sibling to the younger voice in ￾1c20Gloria￾1d20 that has faith but is still confused.

U2 made an album that was not safe. It was not made of a lot of songs that would jump on the charts, but it is an album that deals with a story of spiritual destruction and desire for rebirth. ￾1c20Unknown Caller￾1d20 is a perfect example of this theme. I believe the songs are placed in the order that they are for a reason. Each lyric and each note is sung and played exactly when it is supposed to be. Make no mistake, U2 want you to ￾1c20work￾1d20 for this album. They want you to invest your time into listening and thinking about it. If you put the effort in, you will reap the rewards.

A year later, I have so much more appreciation for it. As I examine its layers and realize how each contributed to the sonic canvas, I now see how these artists created their masterpiece.