No Line On The Horizon

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Ask a half-dozen U2 fans about <i>No Line on the Horizon</i> and you’ll get three dozen different opinions—all of them forceful. Released in 2009 after countless delay, the group’s 12th studio album proved to be immediately divisive. Even now, years later, it’s one of the most-debated entries in U2’s decades-spanning catalog, with listeners still trying to suss out what to make of this late-period oddity: Did the band members push themselves in the wrong direction while making <i>No Line on the Horizon</i>—or did they not push themselves <i>enough</i>? And is the resulting album a respectable near-mi, an overlooked treasure, or a full-on artistic flop? One thing’s for sure: <i>No Line on the Horizon</i> had the most painful and protracted gestation period of any U2 album—though not without good reason. The back-to-back successes of 2000’s <i>All That You Can’t Leave Behind</i> and 2004’s <i>How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb</i> had restored U2’s post-<i>Pop</i> mojo, and yielded several can’t-miss new-millennium rock anthem. But to the band member, the idea of going back into the studio and trying to recreate the magic of something like “Beautiful Day” or “Vertigo” was likely a daunting prospect—not to mention an uninspiring one. After all, this is the group that, years earlier, had abandoned the anthem-packed, arena-filling sound of <i>The Joshua Tree</i>, replacing it with the glittery leisure-suit electro-kitsch of <i>Achtung Baby</i>— to this day, one of the riskiest, and most successful, rock ’n’ roll reversals of all time. For Bono, the Edge, Larry Mullen Jr., and Adam Clayton, change was a semi-constant necessity—albeit an uneasy one. Still, no one expected the making of <i>No Line on the Horizon</i> to take almost five year, as the group chased one idea after the next. Because this is U2—a group with the chattiest lead singer of all time—fans spent nearly half a decade getting fitful status reports via the press: At first, the record was going to be a mighty team-up between U2 and super-producer Rick Rubin. When that collaboration failed to yield an album, word got around that U2 was back with Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, the duo behind such hits as <i>The Unforgettable Fire</i> and <i>The Joshua Tree</i>. At some point, it became clear the band was <i>also</i> spending time in the studio with Steve Lillywhite, the group’s on-again, off-again producer since the early 1980. Multiple recording sessions with multiple producers in multiple cities—all with multiple promises that the band members were exploring new sound. And yet, for years—no album on the horizon. Then, in early 2009, U2 appeared at the Grammy Award, opening the show with a new single: “Get On Your Boot,” a glammy riff on Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blue,” featuring so many fast-paced Bono bon mot, you almost needed a bottom-screen ticker to keep track of them all. It was a tough watch—the sight (and sound) of a band doubling-down on one of the weakest tracks from its newest album. And while <i>No Line on the Horizon</i> would go on to sell millions of copie, and eventually inspired a gazillions-grossing worldwide tour, the decision to make “Get On Your Boots” the lead-off single killed the album before it even had a chance. Which is a shame, because <i>No Line on the Horizon</i> has its share of solid tune. And while they’re not as boundary-pushing as fans may have hoped, they do find U2 trying to get past the big-riff mindset that had hampered the group at times in the early 2000. The title track, which the band co-wrote with Lanois and Eno, is a gentle epic, with cryptic guitar, careening synth, and some of the most subtly daring drumming of Mullen Jr.’s career. “Magnificent,” meanwhile, feels perched somewhere between the desperate uplift of <i>The Unforgettable Fire</i> and the glossy future-rock of <i>Achtung Baby</i>. Even when the tracks feel more like soundscapes than songs—as with the haunting “FEZ — Being Born”—there’s a genuine sense that these guys are, for the first time in a while, truly trying to push themselve. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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