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BLOG: No Line On The Horizon is U2's finest hour
One writer's view on the upcoming album
Joe Bosso, Sat 21 Feb 2009, 4:25 pm UTC
Why anybody would download an appetizer of a single is beyond me when they can feast on a full course meal of an album this rich and sumptuous. It's a turn-on all right, but for all of its machinery, it's hardly mechanical.
Quite possibly, it's U2's most earthy and liberating album, and certainly a signal to every other band out there with bold ambitions and dreams of shocking the world with great art: Go ahead, be bold, be audacious, be fearless. It can be done. Here's how.
Bono looms large
"I know a girl who's like the sea/ I watch her changing every day for me" Bono sings in the opening, jarring title cut. The grinding power of the instrumentation, by turns techno and retro-rock, driven by a forceful guitar line, is urgent, and it shakes you like a 3am phone call. Bono doesn't let up; he charges at you with the same wicked intensity as Mick Jagger did on Beggar's Banquet, and you feel his desperation in the pit of your stomach.
Bono's voice has matured, but it's gained depth and strength
"Every night I have the same dream/ I'm hatching some plot, scheming some scheme," he sings towards the end. The same man who now has world leaders on his BlackBerry can still dial into raw urges like a man left all alone with his racing thoughts and nothing more.
As a singer, Bono's presence looms large. His voice has matured - there's a certain kind of ragged world-weariness that is to be expected with the passage of time - but it's gained depth and strength. Whereas age is usually a killer to vocalists, some singers (think Johnny Cash in his autumn years; his booming yet fragile baritone ate microphones) make it work for them. Bono is headed in this direction.
This is The Edge!
The Edge pursues sounds both pure and unnatural. His trademark guitar lines ring out like gunshots
Still, The Edge stands his ground, and the resolve with which he pursues sounds both pure and unnatural - his trademark guitar lines on Magnificent (a echo-laden stadium slammer), Unknown Caller and Breathe ring out like gunshots, each note hitting its mark - continues to be his greatest gift.
The Edge's contributions cannot be overstated. In his hands, a guitar is an instrument of change, one which can alter the senses - on the title cut, distorted guitars slam against one another; it's like you're in a cave filled with amps, and you can't tell where the sounds are coming from, because they're everywhere.
But he's capable of subtler tricks too: Take Moment Of Surrender, for example, in which he's looking in a mirror, but he's also staring at a poster of David Gilmour and riding out a slide solo that is tubey, bluesy and oh-so-Strat-ish. It's one thing to invent a sound; it's another thing to marry it with somebody else's; and it's one quite another to turn it all into something totally new, which is what The Edge does here.
