U2 – ‘No Line On The Horizon’

Will Brian Eno and/or Daniel Lanois be producing the next Kings Of Leon album, do you think? I know they’ve done good work as producers both together and apart, but they’re not the only ticket in town, surely? Coldplay are recording their next album with Eno, Kings Of Leon seem a dead cert to work with Daniel Lanois at some stage in their career. As for U2, was there really any need for the Lanois/Eno hookup once more?

Well, initial recording sessions with Rick Rubin fell flat, leading U2 to sack Rubin from early sessions for the LP. My thought is U2 could and should have brought in some new blood, in a similar way to how they introduced Flood to the inner circle for ‘Achtung Baby’. The last two U2 albums were fine if you liked that sort of thing but U2 themselves have been sensible enough to realise ‘Beautiful Day’ part three wasn’t really what the public would have wanted this time out. So, ‘Get On Your Boots’ comes out as a somewhat brave first single release. For fans of ‘Achtung Baby’, ‘Zooropa’ or even ‘Pop’, ‘Get On Your Boots’ raises hopes that U2 have really gone for broke and tried to experiment once more. So, a terrific and dumb bass-line and a very trashy song are the order of the day. Fun, but surely not a song to have the same impact as previous lead U2 singles?

The rest of this new U2 long-player bears almost no resemblance at all to ‘Get On Your Boots’, by the way. In fact, the rest of this LP more or less resembles a ‘trying less hard’ version of the previous few LPs, albeit with better textures and production. The title track for instance has plenty of atmosphere and sounds a bit like U2 have been listening to recent Kings Of Leon album tracks. Well, you would do if you were Bono, he’s always had a desire to remain relevant and cool, in some shape or fashion. Then again, a good third of ‘No Line On The Horizon’ songs remind you of U2 circa ‘Joshua Tree’, almost as if U2 have been trying to write a follow-up to that particular career peak.

You know what, i’m not sure U2 really knew what kind of album they wanted ‘No Line On The Horizon’ to be. It appears to be rather confused in that respect. Whatever kind of album this is however, it’s not enough to stop songs like ‘Unknown Caller’ grow into ‘Joshua Tree’ style pieces of class. I don’t like the keyboard line though – they needed a proper church organ sound as the rest of the music temporaily dropped out. 

‘Stand Up Comedy’ appears to be U2 listening to ‘Monster’ era REM of all things. The closing ‘Cedars Of Lebanon’ seems to be a Lou Reed that never became a rock god at all, but decided to mess around at home one day and talk into his tape recorder. ‘Cedars OfLebanon’ is nothing more than a relaxed U2 keyboard/rhythm section groove that goes nowhere over which Bono embrasses himself. We badly need a few genuine highlights then, don’t we? Thank goodness for ‘FEZ – Being Born’, U2 haven’t sounded as passionate as this since 1985. Oh by all means, ‘Being Born’ retains modern production touches but this seems like far more than just going through the motions. ‘Magnificent’ is also a good song, traditional in structural terms, very U2 but Edge’s ringing guitar does still sound excellent and Bono actually has something to sing. The seven minute ‘Moment Of Surrender’ is a nice song but seven minutes?

We’ve got a total of eleven songs here running to fifty three minutes, that’s an average of about 5 minutes per song, which is also a problem for ‘No Line On The Horizon’. Songs are padded out, other songs merely not developed properly. You’d almost suggest the album sounds like U2 were rushed. The last time to my knowledge a rushed U2 made an album we got ‘Zooropa’ but ‘No Line On The Horizon’ is no ‘Zooropa’. 

6.5

By Adrian Denning