U2 - No Line on the Horizon

Review for Nexus Magazine (www.nexusmag.co.nz)

The public opinion of U2 in this decade seems to be sharply divided. Even though they are still one of the world’s most popular bands in terms of sales, Bono’s overexposure in the media and his outspoken personality has left a lot of people completely sick of the band. It certainly does not help their case when they release songs like Elevation, with awful lyrical passages like “a mole, living in a hole, digging up my soul, going down, excavation”. Luckily for No Line on the Horizon, it is far more musically ambitious than the painfully mindnumbing All That You Can Leave Behind and the flawed How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.

This is the first U2 release I’ve heard in a very long time that sounds like a proper album as opposed to a collection of adult-contemporary FM singles slapped together. The real star of the show right from the beginning to the very end is Brian Eno. The textual use of subtle synthesisors and organs give the whole album an epic, sweeping feel that was sorely missing from the last few releases. Presumably these great mixes will not hold up so well on radio or through laptop speakers, but this album sounds fantastic through a good stereo system or headphones.

This album is weighted very differently to your typical U2 record. Generally the first half is single heavy (The Joshua Tree, How to Dismantle.. have their singles as tracks 1, 2 & 3), and then gets to the more subtle moodier songs for the remainder of the album. No Line on the Horizon starts with the more subtle tracks before really hitting its stride half way through. The more energetic songs seem to be musical tributes to Muse (Get On Your Boots), Led Zeppelin (Stand Up Comedy) to The White Stripes (Breathe). The Edge recently collaborated with Jack White and Jimmy Page on the documentary It Might Get Loud, and the influence of this encounter can be heard throughout the later tracks of the album.

Two highlights of the album for me have to be Fez – Being Born and White as Snow. Both seem to capture a cold atmosphere that is also displayed in the bleak album art. But the best is saved for last: Cedars of Lebanon is a beautifully brittle epilogue to the album and one of the best songs that they have written and produced in a very long time.

Far more daring than its weak predecessors, this album shows that U2 still remains an important band capable of writing good music. Despite being rather unpopular with just about everyone under the age of 30 or so, a lot of people might end up liking this album if they actually tried it. It is patchy at the beginning but the second half is arguably the strongest collection of songs U2 have written since The Joshua Tree.

Rating: 3.5/5