U2

No Line on the Horizon (2009)

March 25, 2009

** ½ / ****

By Mr. Marlowe

It is apparent from the first wash of sonic texture on the very first song that U2 is swinging for the fences with its latest release, No Line on the Horizon. Big, brash music by a big, brash band meets calculated risk and past retread. The result is an album that sounds at once new and familiar, bombastic and radio ready, yet doesn’t quite capture the magic of either U2 at their best or the U2 that has time and again reinvented themselves as rock n’ roll pioneers.

The trouble with No Line on the Horizon is that the album sounds like U2 trying to be Coldplay trying to be U2. This tactic yields a strange set of songs that try very hard but come off more like elevator music U2 than selections from the self-proclaimed greatest band on the planet. There are a few winners on this top-heavy album but for the most part the entirety of the proceedings is too calculated, too put upon, and inevitably a bit boring as well.

The best tracks on the album are the ones that feel like new additions to U2’s best classic albums. Magnificent is the consummate blast from the past, in this case, taking more than a hint from The Unforgettable Fire. The music chugs and jostles holding us in the palm of its hand. But then Bono arrives on vocals and sort of spoils the whole thing.

Not content to merely accompany the music Bono 2009 seems always to be trying to upstage the music. And when his silly Coldplay-esque lyrics combine with the ever-increasing Bono clichés things get more than a little distracting.

No Line on the Horizon does a lot better. The song sounds like an Achtung Baby era The Fly remix. Here Bono shouts “whoa whoa whoa whoaoohhhh” and it works, shifting the tune into Trash, Trampoline, and The Party Girl meets Coldplay’s Yellow territory only more exciting and aggressive. It’s a nice cut and paste job and even with a weak chorus proves that by the book U2 with a twist can still elicit some very nice music. Unfortunately, it is the title track, the first cut on the album, and better than anything else we hear over the next ten songs.

The last of the good on No Line on the Horizon is Moment of Surrender. The song is Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World from Achtung Baby meets Your Blue Room from U2’s Passengers album. It’s a decent song and at 7 minutes 20 seconds an interesting centerpiece to the No Line, Moment, Magnificent triumvirate. Sure, it goes a little long, never really gets us with a hook, and every time Bono croons “magnificent” I sort of cringe, but that’s OK. It sounds like classic U2 updated for 2009, and that is a good thing. Certainly, there is much worse it could be, like the rest of the album.

The first single, Put Your Boots On, is a very poor man’s Mediate, one of INXS’s big ‘80s hits. Give U2 credit for not sticking exactly to the Mediate template, but dock them big time for adding a mish mash of sounds which don’t gel at all. This is consummate U2 at their worst.

Everything else on No Line on the Horizon is tepid. Unknown Caller swipes a riff from Walk On but doesn’t do much with it. Stand Up Comedy is U2 doing funk, I suppose, or else a bastard son of the goofy I Am The Walrus, a Beatles rendition they turned in on the Across the Universe soundtrack. Either way neither elicits writing home about.

There are more missteps on the album but really it doesn’t much matter. The more you listen to No Line on the Horizon the more apparent it becomes that you want it to be better than it actually is. Perhaps if U2 stopped chasing trends, stopped trying to reinvent their past, and stopped trying to be Coldplay then the album could have been great. But alas, it is not.

Best Songs: No Line on the Horizon, Moment of Surrender, Magnificent