New Music Wednesday!

Each Wednesday, I will (attempt) to review two or three songs that I am hearing for the first time and review them, in an effort to both broaden my own musical tastes and perhaps inspire you to do the same. This week, however, I will be reviewing a new album instead.

Album Review
U2, No Line on the Horizon, 2009

Depending on whom you ask, you could conceivably get any number of opinions about U2. They're the biggest band in the world. They're grandiose and way over the top. Bono is one of the great human rights advocates of our time. Bono thinks he's Jesus. U2's catalogue is more diverse than most major artists could dream of. All U2 songs sound the same.

I suppose, then, that like all music, theirs is a matter of taste. Having sold about 150 million records in their still active career, the band probably doesn't need to worry about pleasing Rolling Stone (they gushed through a five star review anyway) or TIME Magazine (the magazine that gave them the cover in 1987 found it uninteresting and insist the band's best days are behind them; two stars). Having read both reviews, I'd say both are just a bit off the mark in one key area.

As an English lit student, one of the things drilled into our heads is the idea of separating the narrator from the author. Unreliable narrators in works by such authors as Edgar Allan Poe and William Faulkner drive home the disconnect that must exist between art and the artist. To read every novel, poem, or even song as completely autobiographical is to misread it. I'm not entirely sure why Bono's lyrics get a far more literal reading than, say, Paul Simon's or Sting's. Most reviewers, it would seem, cannot hear Bono singing without envisioning Bono the person directly addressing them, whether he is lifting them up or talking down to them. While I think much of his personality runs through his lyrics (really, how could it not?), I am fairly confident listening to a line like "I was born to sing for you/ I didn't have a choice but to lift you up/ And sing whatever song you wanted me to" that he isn't singing to me or Josh Tyrangiel from TIME, but a higher power. That higher power. The song is called "Magnificent", after all... doesn't seem to take much extrapolation to figure out who the singer "will magnify" with "a joyful noise".

So, tangents aside, where does that leave us?

No Line on the Horizon stacks up very well to U2's prior catalogue, though not because it is the next Joshua Tree or Achtung Baby. It's not. In fact, the closest comparison I have is actually 1984's The Unforgettable Fire. The ambient production and atmosphere (hallmarks of Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois's work with U2) weaves through songs that sound both familiar and yet surprisingly fresh and unpredictable. This last quality is perhaps my favorite; Horizon is an album from a band that has not lost its vitality and is still evolving.

Certainly, many songs retain certain U2 hallmarks. "Moment of Surrender" might stand in for "Stuck in a Moment" and "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" as the radio ballad (all three occupy the third track on their respective albums), but the song brings in a deftly used cello and is more introspective than bombastic. It's also seven minutes long, but you'll barely notice that due to the song's paradoxical restraint. The song is already receiving early praise.

There are few rockers here ("Stand Up Comedy","Get On Your Boots", and "Breathe" are the only real uptempo numbers to speak of) but Horizon doesn't drag or bore. The title track, which is also the album opener, is the first to open the album's theme: that of moving forward--not so much moving on from anything, in the vein of "Walk On", but rather taking in the view of the uncertain future that lays ahead, steeling ourselves to it, and going right at it with an open mind and a hopeful heart. As much as it tried to be, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb was too heavy at parts to be uplifting as a whole. Horizon is far more successful in that sense.

The songs pull the listener in, but are densely layered in sound. "FEZ-Being Born", while not quite art-rock, has atmosphere we have not heard from U2 since the aforementioned Unforgettable Fire. The comparison between the two albums is apt in that both tried to push the boundaries of what was expected of the band at the time, without sacrificing all of what brought fans in in the first place. Both albums take chances, and as a part of that, not everything works. Horizon is not a perfect album, but I don't think it's meant to be. The new sonic directions the band explores (owing as much to the producers as to Edge, I would guess) are refreshing even when they aren't up to par with Achtung Baby. I prefer ambition--with all the implicit flaws--over playing it safe.

Tracks like "Breathe" and "Get On Your Boots" sound fresh and vital. Larry's drumming, in particular, shines throughout. Bono's lyrics seem to have come miles from the last album, which spoke directly but often rather mundanely. Songs such as "Being Born", "Moment of Surrender", and "Breathe" shine lyrically, and "White as Snow" reads like the finer moments of The Joshua Tree. Even the goofiness of some of the lyrics in "Unknown Caller" (urging you, the listener, to "reboot yourself") meshes with the album's theme so well that you forgive its corniness. Speaking of occasionally corny lyrics, memo to Bono: "ATM machine" is redundant. I'll forgive you though because the rest of the lyrics are killer.

"Moment of Surrender" will get all the praise in the ballad department, but "White As Snow" and "Cedars of Lebanon" are both beautiful and haunting. The former features brilliant use of French horn as a role-playing instrument, playing off the bass in an unexpected but gorgeous moment of transition within the piece. Song structures vary and the functions of the guitars and keyboards keep things varied. With all due respect to "The Wanderer" from Zooropa, which I absolutely adore, "Cedars" might be their most compelling album closer since "Love Is Blindness" in 1991. This song ends quietly, but in such a fashion that you will be forced to stop what you are doing to pay attention to it.

No Line on the Horizon will probably not convert any new U2 fans who were not already on board, but those with even a cursory interest in the band will find it to be a pretty great listen. "Breathe", in particular, is worthy of an important place on the probably not forthcoming "Best of 2000-2010". While the album is certainly a grower, and not all of the songs make an immediate impression, I found it to be a refreshing and invigorating listen. It's enjoyable to see a band of their stature continue to grow, and my fears that their career had come full circle were apparently unfounded. This is the sound of a band that has far too much vitality to succumb to a greatest hits tour. There are further chapters ahead, and I'm certainly enjoying the current one.

GRADE: I'm probably too biased to give one. I'll say B+.