U2′s New Horizon

Famous bands generally follow one of two career paths: break up while still at their peak, leaving fans wondering what might have been – or stick around long enough to eventually become a tribute band to their former selves. And then there’s U2, who’ve been famous for three decades and yet the entire world still stops and pays attention each time they release a new album. Maybe it’s because they’ve known when to disappear for awhile and then come back with a whole new identity. Or maybe it’s because they’ve known when they needed to come back to their roots.



But no matter what U2’s secret recipe might be, they’ve pulled it off again. After disappearing for nearly five years for committing the sin of making two albums in a row that sounded “too much” like U2, the band now reemerges from the shadows with No Line On the Horizon, an album which while still recalling memories of the band’s earlier work, manages to go to a lot of places U2 has never previously visited. As such it’s not an instantly accessible album; the first time I listened to it all the way through I’m not even sure I was enjoying the experience. But at the same time, I knew I’d like it more each successive time I listened to it. It’s sort of like shopping in a new grocery store for the first time and not really being able to find things where you’d expect them to be, but appreciating the store enough to know that you’ll enjoy shopping there in the future. It’s a weird analogy, but it’s a weird album.



If you’re expecting the first single “Get On Your Boots” to tell you much about the musical direction of the album, think again. The song is placed halfway through the record, and within the context of the full album it feels less like a centerpiece and more like a goofy halftime break. The only real clue you’ll get from the single is that it’s new and different while brushing up against previous decades of U2 in such a vague manner that you’re not even sure which of U2’s decades is being tapped on the shoulder. Take the second song on the album, which would have been absurdly out of place on 1984’s The Unforgettable Fire, yet still makes you feel like you’re in that era (perhaps the first time U2 has pulled that off in the six albums they’ve released since then). But then again, the opening title track feels like just maybe it could have been the lead single that 1993’s Zooropa never really did have.



In fact Zooropa could be a metaphor for this entire album, conceptually if not sonically. The fact that half the U2 fans reading this have no idea that Zooropa exists tells you about how inaccessible that particular album proved to be, but then the band wasn’t even trying to promote that album, were they? And yet here they are going for the jugular this time around, performing at the Presidential Inauguration, then the Grammys, then a full week on Letterman. Next week they’ll probably be performing on top of the Goodyear blimp. So this album had better have a little more substance than the nonchalant walk in the park that was Zooropa. And indeed, this album does. It just might take you a little bit to get there with it.



“Unknown Caller” is a nice bit of balladry, at least until you hit the lyric “Force quit and move to trash” and you begin to wonder if perhaps Bono was penciling in lines while sitting at his Mac laptop and forgot to replace them with real lyrics later. But about the fourth time around, the lyrics almost become soothing in their absurdness. And then there’s the sweeping “Moment of Surrender” which might or might not do anything for you the first time around but you’ll probably wake up the next day (as I did) with the chorus of the song stuck in your head.



For each song that recalls earlier U2, there’s another that sounds like nothing they’ve ever done. “Fez: Being Born” manages to plant a Moroccan-influenced trance-like song into the middle of the album, and sample “Get On Your Boots” at the same time, while somehow not throwing off the flow of the album. The mid-tempo “Breathe” is way too good to be the next-to-last song on the record, and it’s also one of those songs that’ll probably never quite sound right live (as evidenced by U2’s first night on Letterman), yet that won’t stop the band from spending the next decade trying to do just that while on tour.



And maybe that’s what allows U2 to remain as vital today as they were in the 80’s or 90’s – even when the band creates an indisputable masterpiece like The Joshua Tree or Achtung Baby, there’s always the sense that they’ve still not quite yet reached perfection, that there’s still some room for growth in there. Each time they release a new album there’s always the tease that there might be something even better coming on the one after that. When a band has to compete against its own thirty-year-long cherished back-catalog, they’re not supposed to be able to make new music that can hold a candle to anything in that catalog. And yet U2 continues to prove to be the exception to that rule.



I can’t tell you whether or not you’ll like No Line On The Horizon. Comments I’ve heard from fellow U2 fans have ranged from “it’s a brilliant album” to “they’re trying to sound like Pink Floyd and it’s not working.” But I can tell you that while I’m a life-long fan of the band, not every one of their albums has worked for me (POP never did grow on me despite all the time I spent trying, and I think I’ve listened to Zooropa all the way through maybe twice in fifteen years; I knew it wasn’t going to grow on me either). But despite taking a few tries, this new album really works for me. Maybe it’s because I was so hungry for U2 to branch out into new territory (and have it actually work) for the first time since Achtung Baby.



There are questions that still need answers. Why did the preliminary artwork feature an equal sign on the horizon, which disappeared on the official release? And why is Bono suddenly wearing eyeliner in a manner that makes him look like he’s just been beaten up?



In any case, No Line On The Horizon is all I want to listen to right now. I made myself go back and listen to The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby in full today just to see how the new record stacks up. Neither of those classics is in danger of being toppled, but Horizon does manage hold its own. At least that’s how I feel about it as of today. Ask me again after a few dozen more listens.