February 20, 200916 yr Author http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7900051.stm Can new album keep U2 on top? By Ian Youngs Music reporter, BBC News Five years after their last album and more than 20 since they became the biggest band in the world, the time has come for U2 to reclaim their rock 'n' roll crown. With a career of almost unparalleled success and acclaim, expectations are high for their new album, No Line on the Horizon. So does it deliver? Every big band is judged on, and defined by, their biggest tunes. For U2, The Joshua Tree's opening salvo of Where The Streets Have No Name, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and With Or Without You put them at the very top of the rock pecking order in 1987. More recently, they have kept the hits coming coming. Their last album How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb was led by three big tunes - Vertigo, Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own and City Of Blinding Lights. Its predecessor All That You Can't Leave Behind, in 2000, contained Beautiful Day, Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of and Elevation. Those were all stirring, soaring U2 anthems. This album is a bit different. The huge, rousing tunes are still there. About half of the new album could be classed as having come from the classic U2 mould - driving rhythms, wide open guitars, impassioned vocals. But they don't quite scale the heights we have come to expect. Get On Your Boots, the first single, has been met with a lukewarm response. The guitars sound dirty, not uplifting, and the "sexy boots" refrain is uncharacteristically mundane and ridiculous. I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight, Magnificent and Stand Up Comedy are the closest things to U2 epics. But they lack the simple power of the group's grand anthems. Now for the good news. The other side of the album sees a different U2 take over - a band that are expanding their vision, tilting their ambitions and letting their instincts for melody and musicianship deliver some stunning songs. Some of these tunes are mellow and warm, some are stripped back and personal. Some take the trademark U2 ingredients of passion and power but play with melody and structure in a way that makes them stimulating and satisfying, even if they swerve to avoid a soaring chorus. No Line On the Horizon, the title track, builds on subtly shuffling guitars and drums, and is given impetus by Bono's simple, repeated verses that are followed by flourishing wails. Moment of Surrender, a seven-and-a-half minute slow burner, is long but never dull. Upon laid-back beats are layered strings, an organ and a gospel backing, before The Edge's quivering guitar sends it into the dreamy, dusty distance. It is arguably the outstanding track. Unknown Caller, clocking in at six minutes, starts with sun-blushed chimes and flutters, and is built around a chanted chorus, as some desert drums, a familiar panoramic guitar and some wandering "woahs" join in. Cedars of Lebanon, the closing track, is more bare, but no less compelling, with reflective vocals on top of brushed beats and plaintive twanging. This is the sound of a band at ease with themselves, exploring their possibilities. They have been aided by producers Brian Eno and Danny Lanois, who also have co-writing credits this time. When they try to do classic, bombastic U2, they fall short. The absence of stadium-sized sing-a-long choruses could see some write them off. They may have turned a corner, but they are now pointing in a more interesting direction.
February 20, 200916 yr Author http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/4...zon-review.html U2 - No Line on the Horizon, review No Line on the Horizon is a bold, beautiful and highly speculative re-imagining of U2's music. By Andrew Perry Last Updated: 3:33PM GMT 20 Feb 2009 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. This track, among others on the album, was written during a group retreat to Fez in Morocco. Bono talks of the city as the crossroads between Western modernism and Eastern tradition – a typically globe-trotting cipher for U2 themselves. Where Get on Your Boots is all high-tech, "edgy" electronic scuzz, the next track, Stand Up Comedy, kerrangs along on a belting riff, as arcane as Led Zeppelin. On Moment of Surrender, ancient and modern collide in exquisite, futuristic (and secular) gospel. Bono, ever maligned for his gestural politics, often writes as a kind of world traveller diarist, whether chronicling a mood-elevating return to Africa (Fez – Being Born) or his jet-lagged laptop activity (Unknown Caller). There's a scrupulous distinction between Bono the poverty-buster, and Bono the rocker – no big messages here, just a mirror on global confusion. "I don't wanna talk about wars between nations," he sings at one point, adding, with a knowing wink, "Not right now – Hey, Sexy Boots!" On this form, we should be pleased he's so easily distracted.
February 22, 200916 yr Moment of Surrender :wub: Absolutely amazing!! It was send to me last night and I already LOVE it.
February 22, 200916 yr Author http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/..._on_the_horizon U2 No Line On The Horizon RS: 5of 5 Stars Average User Rating:4of 5 Stars "I was born to sing for you/I didn't have a choice but to lift you up," Bono declares early on this album, in a song called "Magnificent." He does it in an oddly low register, a heated hush just above the shimmer of the Edge's guitar and the iron-horse roll of bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. Bono is soon up in thin air with those familiar rodeo yells, on his way to the chorus, which ends with him just singing the word "magnificent," repeating it with relish, stretching the syllables. But he does it not in self-congratulation, more like wonder and respect, as if in middle age, on his band's 11th studio album, he still can't believe his gift — and luck. Bono knows he was born with a good weapon for making the right kind of trouble: the clean gleam and rocket's arc of that voice. "It was one dull morning/I woke the world with bawling," he boasted in "Out of Control," written by Bono on his 18th birthday and issued on U2's Irish debut EP. He is still singing about singing, all over No Line on the Horizon, U2's first album in nearly five years and their best, in its textural exploration and tenacious melodic grip, since 1991's Achtung Baby. "Shout for joy if you get the chance," Bono commands, in a text-message cadence and drill sergeant's bark, in "Unknown Caller." He leads by example in the ham-with-wry pop of "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" — "Listen for me/I'll be shouting/Shouting to the darkness" — then demands his piece of the din in the glam-fuzz shindig "Get on Your Boots": "Let me in the sound!...Meet me in the sound!" God, guilt, love, sin, terrorism and transcendence — Bono juggles them all here, with the usual cracks at his own hubris. ("Stand up to rock stars," he warns in "Stand Up Comedy." "Be careful of small men with big ideas.") Bono also keeps coming back to the sheer power and pleasure of a long high note and the salvation you can feel in being heard. "I'm running down the road like loose electricity," he jabbers, with some of that nasal acid of the '66 Bob Dylan, through the hard-rock clatter of "Breathe," "while the band in my head plays a striptease." It is a strange thing to sing on a record that more often reveals itself in tempered gestures, at a measured pace. (The main exception, the outright frivolity of "Get on Your Boots," comes right in the middle, as if the band thought it needed some kind of zany halftime.) Most of the great — and biggest-selling — U2 albums have been confrontational successes: the dramatic entrance on 1980's Boy; the spiritual-pilgrim reach of 1987's The Joshua Tree; the electro-Weimar whirl of Achtung Baby; the return to basics on 2004's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Produced by the now-standard trio of Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite, No Line on the Horizon is closer to the transitional risks — the Irish-gothic spell of 1984's The Unforgettable Fire, the techno-rock jet lag of 1993's Zooropa — but with a consistent persuasion in the guitar hooks, rhythms and vocal lines. In "No Line on the Horizon," it is the combination of garage-organ drone, fat guitar distortion and Mullen's parade-ground drumming, the last so sharp and hard all the way through that it's difficult to tell how much is him and how much is looping (that is a compliment). The Edge takes one of his few extended guitar solos at the end of "Unknown Caller," a straightforward, elegiac break with a worn, notched edge to his treble tone. "White as Snow" is mostly alpine quiet — guitar, keyboard, Bono and harmonies, like the Doors' "The Crystal Ship" crossed with an Appalachian ballad. "Cedars of Lebanon" ends the album much as "The Wanderer" did on Zooropa, a triumph of bare minimums (this time it's Bono going in circles, through wreckage, instead of Johnny Cash, who sang "The Wanderer") with limpid guitar and electronics suggesting a Jimi Hendrix love song, had he lived into the digital age. "Fez — Being Born" is the least linear song on this album (no small achievement), a highway ride in flashback images dotted with Bono's wordless yelps and the descending ring of the Edge's guitar. The last lines actually tell you plenty about U2's songwriting priorities: "Head first, then foot/Then heart sets sail." The big irony: Their singer is one of the most insecure frontmen in the business. Bono knows exactly what a lot of you think of his social activism and flamboyant freelance diplomacy. But the flip side of that bravado, in "I'll Go Crazy..." — "The right to appear ridiculous is something I hold dear" — is a running doubt in Bono's lyrics, that he always goes too far ("Stand Up Comedy") and will never be as good as his ideals. The rising-falling effect of the harmony voices around Bono in the long space-walk "Moment of Surrender" is a perfect picture of where he really wants to be, when he gets to the line about "vision over visibility." And he's sure he'll never get there on his own. "We are people borne of sound/The songs are in our eyes/Gonna wear them like a crown," Bono crows, next to the Edge's fevered-staccato guitar, near the end of "Breathe" — a grateful description of what it's like to be in a great rock & roll band, specifically this one. Bono knows he was born with a voice. He also knows that without Mullen, Clayton and the Edge, he'd be just another big mouth. DAVID FRICKE (Posted: Feb 20, 2009) Edited February 22, 200916 yr by Jupiter9
February 25, 200916 yr Author http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0...1-16601,00.html U2’s No Line on the Horizon, one of the year’s most anticipated albums, hits shelves tomorrow. Fans have had the chance to stream snippets from the band’s official website but here is the first review and track-by-track guide to U2’s 12th studio album. No Line on the Horizon : A promising introduction with Rattle & Hum era vocals, morphing into a gentle rock crescendo. Magnificent : The classic U2 sound returns with Edge’s trademark delay and Bono’s soaring vocals of “Only love can leave such a mark”. Moment of Surrender : A gospel-sounding, soulful groove that, with Bono’s lyrics of belonging, almost feels like a hymn. Unknown Caller : Edge’s delicate guitar work is set against the sounds of birds chirping. It slowly builds into the band’s trademark sound with producer Brian Eno’s touches beginning to seep through. I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight : A predictable, but well executed, U2 ballad – destined to become a live favourite for fans. Get On Your Boots : The first single released off the album is awkward, muffled and a terrible indicator of what the fans can expect. Stand Up Comedy : A funky groove let down only by Bono’s pretentious lyrics affecting its rhythm. The first real let-down of the album. FEZ – Being Born : A departure from the rest of the album with producers Eno and Daniel Lanois creating an epic. Atmospheric synths, blips and all. White As Snow : One of the more simplistic moments on No Line on the Horizon with Bono’s vocals dominating Edge’s quiet guitar plucking. Breathe : Featuring ranting reminiscent of R.E.M’s The End of the World over power chords, Breathe’s memorable chorus is certainly a high point. Cedars of Lebanon : A quieter, brooding track with an almost spoken lyricism. No Line on the Horizon 2 : The rockiest moment you will hear brings back the funky groove for the album’s closer. Sitting below The Joshua Tree but above Pop , No Line on the Horizon walks the same middle ground its predecessors have, with at times enjoyable results. THE VERDICT *** U2 is living in the now. By moving neither forward nor back, the band is as “reasonably good” as it’s been in recent years.
February 26, 200916 yr Author http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/200...9/?zIndex=59024 Music Review: U2 get moody on 'No Line' CD By ALEX VEIGA, The Associated Press 12:41 p.m. February 26, 2009 On the title track of U2's latest album, "No Line On The Horizon," frontman Bono sings "Every night I have the same dream/I'm hatching some plot, scheming some scheme." The Irish rockers' 12th studio album reflects some heavy scheming on the part of the band, and its longtime producers, to mine wider sonic territory that the band has explored since the 1990s. The result is an album that feels more compelling in sound and less strident in message than U2's previous two efforts this decade, which offered some bright spots but seemed crafted with a U2-by-the-numbers approach. The achievement of "No Line" is due to the handiwork of U2's recording studio midwives: Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite, who have had a hand in shaping nearly every U2 album. On "No Line ...," Eno and Lanois play a more hands-on role, meriting the duo co-songwriting credits with Bono and the rest of U2 – guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. – on all but four of the album's 11 tracks. "No Line ... " falls short of the wholesale reinvention that U2 underwent on 1991's "Achtung Baby," but in its best moments showcases a refreshing return to musical exploration for a band that released its debut album 29 years ago. The driving-but-disjointed leadoff single, "Get On Your Boots," has underwhelmed some U2 followers, but there is reassurance – the track is not representative of the album. One standout track is "Magnificent." It begins with a brooding guitar line then weaves into a dance beat backed over layered keyboards and explodes into shimmering, The Edge-trademark guitar fireworks. Bono raises it up a notch, wailing "Only love/Only love can leave such a mark/But only love/Only love can heal such a scar." The track's anthemic build and release is no less effective than the band's signature stadium-pleaser "Where The Streets Have No Name." But one stretch of lyrics where Bono declares he was "born to sing for you/I didn't have a choice but to lift you up," will do little to allay critics who view the singer as a self-appointed savior-megalomaniac. Another gem is "Moment of Surrender," a midtempo ballad that clocks in at longer than 7 minutes. With a rolling bassline and church organ sound as a backdrop, Bono delivers a soulful, passionate vocal as he sings "We set ourselves on fire/Oh God, do not deny her/It's not if I believe in love/But if love believes in me." Thematically, "No Line ..." finds Bono the lyricist exploring familiar U2 fare: love, hope, God and war, but less directly. On the surreal rocker "Unknown Caller," which opens with the birdsong heard in the open-air space in Fez, Morocco, where it was recorded, Bono sings of a man lost "between the midnight and the dawning/In a place of no consequence of company," and then a sing-along chorus implores him to "Escape yourself and gravity ... Force quit and move to trash" – a nod to Mac computer users? The message is more straightforward on "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight," which despite its cumbersome title has U2 making their most unabashed pop song yet. Just when you think you've got a handle on "No Line ...," U2 channels its heretofore unseen funky side with "Stand Up Comedy." The song works overall, but stumbles on some awkward rhyming when Bono sings "Stand up to rock stars/Napoleon is in high heels/Josephine be careful of small men with big ideas." More satisfying is the album's pivot point, the ambient, electro-rocker "Fez-Being Born." U2 left the most compelling songs on "No Line ... " on the latter half of the album: The fragile, folk song like "White As Snow," and the cinematic, spare closer, "Cedars Of Lebanon." The song features a half-spoken vocal by Bono delivered from the viewpoint of a war correspondent. CHECK THIS TRACK OUT: "Breathe," melds some machine gun-vocals by Bono and guitar power chords to create one of the most memorable anthems to come out of the U2 factory.
February 26, 200916 yr Some great reviews up on U2.com. http://www.u2.com/news/article/4593 Q Mag have given it 5 stars, Mojo and Uncut 4 stars.
February 26, 200916 yr Of course :smoke: U2's new 'Horizon' a beautiful day for band Chicago Sun-Times, February 26, 2009 By Jim DeRogatis, Pop Music Critic In the late '70s, as the punk explosion transformed the British and American rock scenes, some of the biggest groups of the preceding years drew inspiration from the new energy and aesthetic to craft albums which, in many cases, stand as great last gasps before impending dinosaurdom. The Rolling Stones responded with Some Girls (1978), Led Zeppelin with In Through the Out Door (1979) and Yes with Going for the One (1977), to name a few. Classic-rock superstars on the same level a generation later, U2 did something similar with Achtung Baby in 1991, at the height of the alternative and Britpop movements. But Bono and his bandmates arguably were even more courageous in abandoning the stadium bombast that had come to characterize their sound in favor of much edgier art-rock experimentation and a new ironic attitude that seemed to scoff at their earlier, often pompous and heavy-handed rattle and hum. It was a good trick, but the Irish rockers could only really do it once, and after Zooropa (1993) and Pop (1997) continued trying to push the envelope with ever-diminishing results, the musicians retreated to bland, retro-minded U2-by-numbers conservatism in the new millennium with All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000) and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004), in between Bono's decidedly non-ironic attempts to end world hunger, cure AIDS and stop global conflict. These good acts stand in sharp contrast to blatant money-grabs such as the band's mega-merchandising deal with Live Nation or its high-priced stadium tours, and as the musicians edged closer to age 50, it seemed as if their own status as musical dinosaurs was a sad inevitability. Or was it? That question looms large over No Line on the Horizon, the band's 12th studio album, arriving in stores on Tuesday but already streaming online. It was voiced most eloquently by Bono himself: "If this isn't our best album, we're irrelevant," he told the Times of London (though during the obnoxious hype campaign, I've heard him say something similar to many a great sage, including Billy Bush of Access Hollywood). To cut to the chase: No, No Line on the Horizon is not U2's best album; that honor still belongs to Achtung Baby. But it is a much stronger effort than any since, or than I'd have expected the band to still be capable of producing. And if the group doesn't quite seem as brave, original or freshly inspired as it did 18 years back -- much less than at the start of its career three decades ago -- well, the new disc at least proves that the quartet is not yet totally irrelevant. Mind you, this is not the same as saying U2 is as important and creative a band as U2 thinks it is, and to an even greater degree than on The Unforgettable Fire (1984), The Joshua Tree (1987) or Achtung Baby, a big portion of the credit for the new album's success is due to the familiar production team of Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, as the musicians themselves acknowledge: Despite their long association, this is the first time Eno and Lanois have received co-songwriting credit with U2 -- their names appear on seven of 11 tracks -- and they also performed with the band in the studio, Lanois on pedal steel guitar and Eno on his famous electronic manipulation/"Enossification." Having abandoned initial sessions with Rick Rubin, a producer who'd have been much more likely to deliver yet another retread U2 rock album, the musicians invited Eno and Lanois to once again challenge U2 about what U2 "should" sound like. Addressing their relationship in 1992, Eno told me: "They have a lot of people obviously who will encourage them to do more of what they've already done...I'm part of the small contingent that redress that by coming along and hearing things that I don't recognize and saying, 'Wow, now that sounds really exciting. Let's follow that for awhile.'" Here, the best results come from the roiling grooves and otherworldly melodies of the title track and "Unknown Caller"; the gospel transcendence of "Moment of Surrender" (which brings to mind Eno's recent collaboration with David Byrne on "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today"); the Middle Eastern drone of "Fez — Being Born"; the inspired rewrite of the 12th Century hymn "Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel" as "White as Snow," a song about a soldier dying in Afghanistan, and "Cedars of Lebanon," which finds Bono channeling Frank Sinatra during a barroom chat set against trademark Eno ambience. Through it all, the musicians are at the top of their games, with drummer Larry Mullen Jr. and bassist Adam Clayton sounding more fluid but propulsive than ever, and the Edge once more proving himself a master of minimalism while adding half a dozen simple but striking new sounds to his bag of sonic tricks. As for soon-to-be-49-year-old Nobel Peace Prize contender Paul David Hewson, his instrument remains a strong one, though he's increasingly confused about whether he wants to say Great and Important Things ("I was born/I was born to sing for you/I didn't have a choice but to lift you up," he croons in the soggy and ponderous "Magnificent") or scoff Fly-like at that very notion while laughing at his own ubiquitous image ("Stand up to rock stars/Napoleon is in high heels/Josephine, be careful/Of small men with big ideas," he advises in the equally annoying "Stand Up Comedy"). Even worse are U2's collaboration with will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas on "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight," an ill-advised attempt to get funky, and the first singe "Get On Your Boots," a space-age take rewrite of a vintage Nancy Sinatra psychedelic go-go ditty. Both tracks find the musicians protesting their youthful vitality to such a degree that they wind up sounding like dirty old men too repulsive and embarrassing to be cast in a Viagra commercial. Given the cringe-worthy lousiness of those four significant missteps, it's even more of a testament to how the lush melodies and swirling sonic inventions of the rest of the disc keep you wanting to come back again and again (albeit with judicious use of the skip/fast-forward function of your CD player or iPod). "Let me in the sound! Meet me in the sound!" Bono chants at different points in no fewer than three of these new songs, and it turns out to be an invitation that's still well worth accepting.
February 27, 200916 yr Exclusive: U2's new album No Line On The Horizon reviewed track by track Feb 27 2009 By John Dingwall http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment...86908-21156315/ U2 may be the biggest band on the planet, but they have admitted they are taking nothing for granted with their new album No Line On The Horizon. The Irish superstars delivered an electronic version to the Razz this week, the first time a newspaper in the UK has been given the tracks in full. But despite excitement from rock fans, Bono, Larry Mullen, The Edge and Adam Clayton insist they are having to work hard to make sure their fans stick with them. Bono said: "A lot of people have a U2 album, why would they want another one? "We feel we have to fight hard to convince people as to why they should come on this ride with us." The band insist they are not resting on their laurels - and say they are still as rooted to the punk rock ideals that led them to form in 1976. The Edge explained: "Punk came at the right moment to shake everything up and challenge everybody on the basis that music had to mean everything. "Because we started out in the audience at those punk gigs, we felt what it was like to be at a Clash show or a Buzzcocks show. "We were 15 and it made such an impact. Being there, you never lose what it is like to be in the crowd." The band are giving a series of sneak previews of tracks on MySpace ahead of the album release next week. It will be released in a standard format with a 24-page booklet and in adigipak format, which includes an extended booklet and the album's companion film, Linear, by Anton Corbijn. A limited edition 64-page magazine will also be available, featuring the band in conversation with artist Catherine Owens and new Anton Corbijn photographs. The band will also release the album on 12-inch vinyl in homage to the classic punk albums that inspired them to get together. Helmed by heavyweight production trio Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite, No Line On The Horizon is a global affair, having been recorded in Morocco, Dublin, New York and London. "We always seem to need locations," Bono said: "It was Berlin for Achtung Baby and in our heads the landscape of America for the Joshua Tree, and Miami for Pop." Four of the songs on the album were recorded in one take, A Moment Of Surrender, No Line On The Horizon, Being Born and Unknown caller. Here's the lowdown on the new album: 1 No Line On The Horizon Droning keyboards and krautrock beats, it's apparently disco rock. The track opens with trademark Edge guitar. 8/10 2 Magnificent The Edge delivers growling guitar over a synth canvas and a pounding beat, before Bono lifts the song into classic U2 territory. 9/10 3 Moment of Surrender This is U2 at the height of their powers. A gospel-tinged power ballad. 10/10 4 Unknown Caller Electronic loops slowly bring Unknown Caller to life before the song bursts to life. 9/10 5 I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight Bono does his falsetto best on this laid-back track. 8/10 6 Get On Your Boots The big hitter single that introduced us to the album, influenced by Elvis Costello and Muse. 7/10 7 Stand Up Comedy This is a banker to become a future single. Big and beefy. 9/10 8 Being Born There's a Middle-Eastern feel to this song but also features Radiohead-like beats and Bono sounding like Thom Yorke. 8/10 9 White As Snow The Middle East features here and ends in country and western territory. 7/10 10 Breathe A track produced by Lilywhite, it turns into a bar room blues rocker. 7/10 11 Cedars Of Lebanon A trippy way to close what must be one of the most original U2 albums in years. 9/10.
February 27, 200916 yr U2's 'Horizon': 4 stars for the 4 superstars U2, No Line on the Horizon * * * * (out of four) By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY U2, No Line on the Horizon * * * * (out of four) Thirty years after U2's recording debut, it's worth remembering how the coolest band in rock 'n' roll earned that status: by rejecting the preoccupation with coolness that then characterized much of modern rock. Bono and friends have never shied from the grand gesture, never been wary of the heart-on-sleeve intensity that can lead lesser artists to sentimentality. Even when they've embraced irony, it's not at the expense of passion. With its 12th studio album, No Line on the Horizon, U2 continues to set the standard for sonic and emotional potency and daring. It lacks the immediate, relentless melodic punch of The Joshua Tree or Achtung Baby, but texturally, Horizon ranks with the group's best, boldest work and grows more resonant with repeated listening. Produced by Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite, who have helped define and refine U2's unmistakable yet ever-evolving sound, the album features music written by the band with Eno and Lanois. The result is tracks with both anthemic sweep and intricate nuance. From the pummeling title cut to the hauntingly spare White As Snow, all are showcases for the musicians' individual and collective strengths. Edge's chiming, richly harmonic guitar work is showcased with loving care, whether he's propelling a hook or pouring his bursts of color and light into a searing solo. Bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. remain the most supple and sensual rhythm team in contemporary rock, providing a flesh-and-blood foundation for the densely atmospheric, distortion-flecked arrangements. FIND MORE STORIES IN: Bono | Horizon | Joshua Tree | Brian Eno | Achtung Baby | Steve Lillywhite | Larry Mullen Jr. | Daniel Lanois | No Line As frontman, Bono continues to acknowledge the contradictions that come with being a superstar with a healthy ego and a keen conscience, worldly sophistication and spiritual curiosity. There are self-deprecating nods to his side gig as celebrated activist: "Be careful of small men with big ideas," he sings in Stand Up Comedy. But the singer is most revealing in yearning, searching mode. "It's not if I believe in love/But if love believes in me/Oh, believe in me," he pleads in Moment of Surrender. After all this time and all that success, U2 still hasn't found what it's looking for: The band is as full of questions and thirsty for inspiration as ever, eager to continue exploring and growing. >Download: Aforementioned songs, Unknown Caller, I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight, Fez — Being Born >Skip: Nothing
February 28, 200916 yr Author http://www.sundayherald.com/arts/arts/disp...2492461.0.0.php Going the distance MUSIC REVIEWS U2 No Line On The Horizon (Mercury) Reviewed by Alan Morrison FOR THE Beatles, it was Abbey Road; for The Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed. Queen delivered A Kind Of Magic; Pink Floyd did The Final Cut. So if U2 still deserve to be considered the biggest rock band in the world, how does their 12th studio album stand up in comparison with these giants of music history? How, indeed, does it stand up in comparison with their own back catalogue? So far, the Dublin quartet have played it safe in the 21st century. Their previous two albums - All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000) and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (2004) - were solid, guitar-driven, commercial hits that added a good few tracks to the canon, but didn't come close to the seminal heights of The Joshua Tree (1987) or Achtung Baby (1991). Respective opening tracks Beautiful Day and Vertigo came charging out of the starting gates, heralding albums with plenty of energy but no obvious desire to push the music scene in any new direction. Perhaps Bono's mind was elsewhere, as he jetted from the G8 summit to the White House to the Vatican in his campaign to eradicate poverty in Africa. As he agreed to photo opportunities with presidents and metaphorically dipped his hand into the pockets of the world's billionaires, he became an easy target for his detractors. Bono is, however, the model for what a politicised modern-day rock star should be. He's willing to let others feed off his fame if they're willing to pay top dollar, but even in his wraparound shades he never played the jester at the court of Bush and Blair. The proof of his success is plain to see in the increased overseas aid budgets of Western governments and the number of African kids now attending schools. There we go again; it's so easy to get distracted from the music. But 33 years into the band's career - a remarkable feat for an unchanged line-up - the time is right for U2 to at least strive for something more: to prove that their global reputation still has some musical currency. With No Line On The Horizon, even the title refuses to set restrictions or acknowledge that the end might be in sight. Producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois are back on board (although Steve Lillywhite continues to twiddle knobs, as he did on recent releases), and it's certainly the band's most ambitious record for some time. The title track opens affairs at mid-pace, saving its urgency for Bono's vocal delivery (he's so happy to be back, he damn near yodels at some points). Magnificent follows up, calming the nerves of long-time fans and coming closest to the band's stadium anthems of the 1980s, as Bono's voice soars and The Edge's guitar chimes: this is U2 doing what only U2 can do. Moment Of Surrender is reckoned by its writers to be the emotional high point of the album, its One (personally I reckon that comes later, with White As Snow). Over seven minutes long, it showcases the looping drum rhythms and understated bass lines of the often-overlooked Larry Mullen Jr and Adam Clayton. Strange, however, that the early drama of a voice set against sustained keyboard chords should give way to boy band harmonies (U2 as the alternative Take That?) and a prog-rock guitar solo (The Edge as the Dave Gilmour of cool?). Next up, Unknown Caller drags down the album's overall pace: a six-minute slab, straight after Moment Of Surrender, is surely a programming error. An arpeggio riff is to the fore, but this time the solo has something of Guitar Hero about it: here is The Edge, an overgrown schoolboy, regarding his reflection in a giant mirror ball. Now, for three songs, comes the back-to-back commercial bit. I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight is, musically speaking, the album's tamest cut, although it does contain a key lyric (Every generation gets a chance to change the world/Pity the nation that will listen to your boys and girls/'Cause the sweetest melody is the one we haven't heard). Current single Get On Your Boots is all dirty fuzz and cheeky fun, an infectious moment of light relief. Stand Up Comedy leaves little impression; it's the kind of funky rock that's best left to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The album's final stretch is its most interesting. Fez - Being Born begins with a full minute of atmospheric studio overlays, the section where Eno's input and the band's studio jaunt to Morocco are clearest. White As Snow ties an intimate story to a traditional melody, creating a beautifully poetic portrait of memory and doubt. Breathe is a proper rocker with a proper rocking rhythm, fitting Bono's pressing rap vocal over a gorgeous progression of chords. Cedars Of Lebanon also puts the singer in character, this time as a jaded war correspondent, giving the topical lyrics and military drumbeat a gentle folky wash. By all accounts, U2 had to work harder at this album; listeners will have to do so too. The band took several years to build up the musical layers in the studio; listeners will require several plays to take them apart again, to appreciate and make sense of each song's construction. If there is a criticism, then it's that this is truly the product of several studio sessions, not a spontaneous, organic whole made by a band who just love to jam together. No Line On The Horizon isn't easily consumed, but it isn't alienating either, and that combination is exactly what puts U2 on top of the world. This is the sound of a band eager to challenge themselves creatively again, to demolish the image that they're just the warm-up act for their singer's political day-job.
March 3, 200916 yr As 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.
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