PookaMacP
War Child
Mods move this if it should be in another thread but I thought the first full reviews deserved a thread of their own.
Dunno how you could review a record from hearing it twice, but they make an interesting read nonetheless.
Oh and kudos to U2 for selling the single for 99c - picked up a copy of the CD and the 7" in Dublin today - looks good.
Hot Press
U2 No Line on the Horizon ****
Keep On Moroccan in the Free World
It's a testament to the band's staying power that a U2 album is still a global news event - as opposed to, say a Rolling Stones record, which everybody knows is just an excuse to got out on another Greatest Hits tour.
As Bono told Hot Press a couple of years ago, it's the young guns like Franz Ferdinand and The Killers (not to mention Kings of Leon and Fleet Foxes) that they're competing with, rather than dadrockers whose best work is a good 20 or 30 years behind them. Which isn't to suggest that they've fallen into the trap of being middle-aged family men trying - and failing horribly - to sound like they're down with the kids. Far from it.
No Line On The Horizon is a mature, tender, reflective record of great musical variety, depth and beauty that could only have been made by four people who've experienced just about everything that life can throw at you.
Anyone judging the album by 'Get On Your Boots', a big funky beast of a song, with Bono hitting notes that a 48-year-old has no right to, will have forgotten how U2 like to tease with their lead singles. The collection's only other ball-busting, out and out rocker is the title-track, which lives up to the 'Buzzcocks meets Bow Wow Wow' billing it's been given by its author, who mizes metaphysics with mischief-making as he recounts: 'She said, 'Time is irrelevant, it's not linear/Then she put her tongue in my ear'.
If that line's playfully throwaway, on the rest of No Line On The Horizon Bono is as lyrically dexterous as he's ever been.
'From the womb my first cry, it was a joyful noise ... only love, only love can leave such a mark', he proclaims on the aptly-titled 'Magnificent', an eclectic mix - inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach's The Magnificat, no less - of mournful Roy Orbison guitar, Killers-style synth stabs (this musical magpie lark works both ways, Brandon!) and anthemic flourishes which recall the likes of 'New Year's Day' and 'Pride'.
You're still digesting all of that when up pops 'Moment of Surrender', a gospel-flavoured seven-minute epic that rides in on an orchestral wave, and includes such evocative cinematic couplets as: 'I was speeding on the subway/Through the stations of the cross/Every eye looking every other way/Counting down 'til the pain would stop'. If U2 were trying to conjure the same spiritual vibe as Marvin Gaye's 'Abraham, Martin, John' they've succeeded. 'Moment Of Surrender' is a big, sweeping track in the vein of 'With Or Without You' that's certain to become a U2 classic.
The first reminder that Fez, in Morocco, was the birthplace for much of the album - and that Brian Eno was among the midwives - is provided by the birdsong and looped Arab percussion at the beginning of 'Unknown Caller', which also finds Bono giving his falsetto another impressive work out.
Things get even more experimental on 'Fez - Being Born', a wonderfully intriguing song of two halves that starts with disembodied voices, FM static and other ambient weirdness before giving way to Edge's trademark chiming guitar. Unconventional, but it works.
Listeners looking for autobiographical insight, meanwhile, should proceed immediately to the Will.i.am and string section-assisted 'I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight', a real grower which features such revelatory lines as 'There's a part of me in the chaos that's quiet/And there's a part of you that wants me to riot'.
You also get the strong suspicion that Bono's talking about himself on 'Stand Up Comedy', another dirty white funk workout on which he declares: 'I can stand up for hope, faith, love/Josephine, be careful of small men with big ideas/Stand up to rock stars, Napoleon is in high heels'. Find me a Chris Martin line that self-deprecating and I'll buy you a pint.
U2 revisit Rattle And Hum 'Van Diemen's Land' with the sparse 'White As Snow', a track written for Jim Sheridan's Afghanistan war movie Brothers. Both lyrically and musically it trays into the same territory as Springsteen's The Ghost Of Tom Joad, with an extra twist of Leonard Cohen for good measure.
Eno has decided that the penultimate track, 'Breathe', is 'the best U2 song ever'. While that assessment is perhaps a little over the top, the Beatles-esque track is a genuine standout with Bono evoking the spirit of St John Devine and unnamed ju-ju men, as a hyperactive cello and Larry's tom-toms fight it out in the background.
If ever there was a song for the times, it's the closing 'Cedars of Lebanon', a beautiful half-spoken ballad in which Bono narrates from the point of view of a weary war correspondent - the thing is that you just know that there's a lot of the U2 frontman in there too.
'Choose your enemies carefully 'cos they will define you/Make them interesting 'cos in some ways they will mind you/They're not there in the beginning but when your story ends/Gonna last with you longer than your friends', he pronounces, before the song does the musical equivalent of The Sopranos' last scene and comes to an abrupt halt, ending the record on a suitably low key and yet indisputably high note.
32 years in, and the buggers are still worth every column inch that No Line On The Horizon's going to garner them. To say that U2 fans will love it is a gross understatement. NLOTH is a very powerful record indeed.
STUART CLARK
KEY TRACK: 'Cedars of Lebanon'
Irish Times
U2 No line on the Horizon Mercury ****
No one knows the line on horizon better than U2 – they’ve spent enough of their career gazing meaningfully in its direction. For their third studio album of the noughties, they decided to blur that line and let everything bleed into one vast wall of sound and twisted vision.
U2 brought us to a comfort zone of sorts with the last two albums, but here they’re up for taking a few risks and chancing arms, legs and cojones on this big, brash embrace of an album. It’s not so much throwing their arms around the world as trying to crush it in a big, fuzzy bearhug.
This is a record of twists and turns and death-defying loops, and anyone looking for a quick-fix anthem may be put off by the complexities on offer here. It’s U2’s prog rock album, so if you want to sing along, you’ll need to grab hold of your chin and pay close attention.
Magnificent comes on like Blondie’s Atomic filtered through Bowie’s Heroes, and is the first of three songs that clock in at more than five minutes. The longest one, Moment of Surrender, sees Bono finding – as usual – redemption in the dirt. Though the reference to getting money out of an ATM may be rather badly timed, it at least shows that his mind is still linked to the ordinary world.
Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois have co-songwriting credits on many of the songs, and Eno’s whooshing keyboard sounds and dense production threads through the album. (The tracks produced by Steve Lillywhite seem sparse by comparison.)
Bono seems more passenger than driver here, and he sounds all the better for it. The Edge is in serious guitar hero form, going all Eric Clapton on the solo for Moment of Surrender , then kicking into Jimmy Page mode for the riff of Stand Up Comedy . Adam Clayton’s bass strains the sub-woofers, but Larry Mullen jnr’s drumming is an exercise in keeping the runaway train on track.
The band leave it till the middle section to bring out the quickfire tunes ( I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight, Get on Your Boots and Stand Up Comedy ), then settle into some Eastern atmospherics on Fez – Being Born (Fez, Morocco is where the album sessions began). The Asian flavours linger on the penultimate blow-out, Breathe, and in the final dispatches of Cedars of Lebanon , but the Western-flecked White as Snow , a traditional arrangement with new lyrics, sits comfortably and confidently amongst them.
With No Line on the Horizon , U2 are no longer constrained by perspective or depth, and are free to throw the colours and shapes around and see where it takes them. They may not be the safe home ground of old, but they’ve arrived at a pretty interesting place.
Download tracks: Magnificent, Moment of Surrender, Stand Up Comedy
Irish Independent
U2: the verdict on 'No Line on the Horizon'
John Meagher
They took their time, didn't they? It's been four years and three months since the last U2 studio album -- the longest gap in the band's history. At times, this -- their 12th -- could have been called No Finish on the Horizon, such were the apparent difficulties and insecurities they faced when making it.
Initially, Rick Rubin, the American producer who helped rejuvenate the careers of Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond, was seen as the one that could move the band into exciting new areas. But those sessions, from July 2006, didn't work out and they turned once more to trusted old friends, Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite. The latter has worked on and off with the band since their debut album, Boy, the former pair from 1984's The Unforgettable Fire.
Recording took place in Morocco, New York, London and their Hanover Quay studio in Dublin with up to 50 new songs recorded. They were still tinkering with songs, titles and sequences right up to Christmas, further fuelling online speculation that they were suffering creative paralysis and not confident enough to let go.
And creative difficulties seemed all too apparent on early acquaintance with lead single, "Get On Your Boots." "Is this it?" you could almost hear the punters say when the song was debuted on 2FM last month. Its insistent, fuzzy guitars were fine, although the nonsense lyrics were harder to stomach, but just where was the bold new direction the band and assorted friends had been promising us?
A bold change in direction will not be found on the album either. It won't wrong-foot the listener in the way that Achtung Baby or even Pop did. But suggestions that U2 had lost their mojo are just as unfounded -- and unfair. No Line on the Horizon may not be a masterpiece, but it is unquestionably a very good, consistently strong collection that's every bit the match of their two huge selling albums of this decade, All That You Can't Leave Behind and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. Even "Get On Your Boots" proves to be a grower, working well when heard within the context of the album.
Just shy of 54 minutes long, it's one of their lengthier efforts. And of the 11 tracks, only two could be described as duds (more of which anon). That's not a bad strike rate by anybody's standards. It starts off strongly with the title track, a barnstorming stadium rock tune that could have come from the songwriting stable of Kings of Leon. The young Southerners have supported U2 on the road, and that clearly has had an impact on Bono who sounds uncannily like that band's Caleb Followill in places. Imitation, flattery and all that...
It's followed by one of the album's stand-outs, the aptly titled "Magnificent." This already sounds like a classic U2 song that combines disparate eras of their career in a hugely appealing way -- War-meets-Zooropa, if you will. Even the most avowed U2-hater is likely to struggle to come up with reasons to dislike the Edge's irresistible guitars and muscular rhythm section. It's one of two songs featuring the keyboards of will.i.am and while the Black Eyed Peas' main man is hardly a distinct enough keys player to make you sit up and take notice, Eno's typically smart production takes all the elements and concocts the sort of epic five-minuter that's become his stock-in-trade. Let's just say one of his more recent "clients," Coldplay's Chris Martin, is likely to weep with envy when he hears it.
No Line on the Horizon is, for the most part, an upbeat album. There are several euphoric moments and lots of allusions to redemption. Songs like "Moment of Salvation" -- which, at more than seven minutes long, definitely outstays its welcome -- is loaded with lyrics referencing "soul," "God" and "fire." The atmospheric "Unknown Caller" is cut from the same cloth. Let's face it, it would hardly be a U2 album if Bono wasn't engaged by such themes -- and if you're one of the many who finds this sort of stuff off-putting, much of the album simply won't work for you.
There are plenty of songs that won't have such a divisive effect, however. "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight," for instance, is a massively uplifting number that's bound to be a live favourite when U2 take the show on the road this summer. There's humour too, as Bono, tongue firmly in cheek, notes: "The right to appear ridiculous is something I hold dear." Never a truer word spoken, Bono.
It's not the only self-deprecating moment on the album. "Stand Up Comedy" finds the frontman, who is given to wearing shoes with elevated soles, singing of "Napolean in high heels" before offering the killer line: "Be careful of small men with big ideas." The Edge's guitar playing is raw and dirty -- it's got Queens of the Stone Age written all over it. But the song fails to captivate. It just seems a little too contrived.
The album's most intriguing song is "FEZ -- Coming Home," which is a triumph of Eno's yen for experimentalism over U2's big sound. (In fact, Eno and Lanois share songwriting credits on several tracks.) It was one of the first songs recorded -- during sessions in the Moroccan city that gives the song its title -- and it's a hint about what this album could have sounded like if the band really had thrown caution to the wind. Its electro-ambient intro features the sound of birds singing and the bustle of Moroccan life (it was apparently recorded in the outdoor courtyard of an ancient riad) and Bono referencing the "let me in the sound" line from "Get On Your Boots," before it dissolves into a scattergun rock that shifts and slides into unexpected territory. The tempo changes are surprising and the song boasts a daring that the bulk of the other tracks, for all their merits, simply lack.
As mentioned at the outset, a pair of songs fall some way short of the mark. One of them is "Stand Up Comedy." The other is "Breathe," which finds Bono in semi spoken-word mode, although the song doesn't do enough to draw the listener in.
The plaintive "White As Snow" has no such problem. One of the slower tracks on the album, its intro recalls Sigur Ros while, later, a French horn highlights the evocative lyrics.
Closer "Cedars of Lebanon" is the most overtly political song, and a real grower. Like many of its siblings on this album, its moody atmospheric texture recalls Achtung Baby-era U2. It's a downbeat song on which to conclude an album brimming with life and hope.
No Line on the Horizon is unlikely to disappoint the band's multitudinous fanbase. They haven't reinvented themselves as they have suggested, but instead play to their strengths. Fledgling bands with stadium rock ambitions could certainly learn a thing or two from this album.
After such a long and difficult gestation, the album feels like a triumph. It won't change the world, but it does give Bono, The Edge, Adam and Larry a ticket for world domination once more. Just watch those sales figures roll in.
No Line on the Horizon is released on February 27. Lead single "Get On Your Boots" is released in physical format today.
Dunno how you could review a record from hearing it twice, but they make an interesting read nonetheless.
Oh and kudos to U2 for selling the single for 99c - picked up a copy of the CD and the 7" in Dublin today - looks good.
Hot Press
U2 No Line on the Horizon ****
Keep On Moroccan in the Free World
It's a testament to the band's staying power that a U2 album is still a global news event - as opposed to, say a Rolling Stones record, which everybody knows is just an excuse to got out on another Greatest Hits tour.
As Bono told Hot Press a couple of years ago, it's the young guns like Franz Ferdinand and The Killers (not to mention Kings of Leon and Fleet Foxes) that they're competing with, rather than dadrockers whose best work is a good 20 or 30 years behind them. Which isn't to suggest that they've fallen into the trap of being middle-aged family men trying - and failing horribly - to sound like they're down with the kids. Far from it.
No Line On The Horizon is a mature, tender, reflective record of great musical variety, depth and beauty that could only have been made by four people who've experienced just about everything that life can throw at you.
Anyone judging the album by 'Get On Your Boots', a big funky beast of a song, with Bono hitting notes that a 48-year-old has no right to, will have forgotten how U2 like to tease with their lead singles. The collection's only other ball-busting, out and out rocker is the title-track, which lives up to the 'Buzzcocks meets Bow Wow Wow' billing it's been given by its author, who mizes metaphysics with mischief-making as he recounts: 'She said, 'Time is irrelevant, it's not linear/Then she put her tongue in my ear'.
If that line's playfully throwaway, on the rest of No Line On The Horizon Bono is as lyrically dexterous as he's ever been.
'From the womb my first cry, it was a joyful noise ... only love, only love can leave such a mark', he proclaims on the aptly-titled 'Magnificent', an eclectic mix - inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach's The Magnificat, no less - of mournful Roy Orbison guitar, Killers-style synth stabs (this musical magpie lark works both ways, Brandon!) and anthemic flourishes which recall the likes of 'New Year's Day' and 'Pride'.
You're still digesting all of that when up pops 'Moment of Surrender', a gospel-flavoured seven-minute epic that rides in on an orchestral wave, and includes such evocative cinematic couplets as: 'I was speeding on the subway/Through the stations of the cross/Every eye looking every other way/Counting down 'til the pain would stop'. If U2 were trying to conjure the same spiritual vibe as Marvin Gaye's 'Abraham, Martin, John' they've succeeded. 'Moment Of Surrender' is a big, sweeping track in the vein of 'With Or Without You' that's certain to become a U2 classic.
The first reminder that Fez, in Morocco, was the birthplace for much of the album - and that Brian Eno was among the midwives - is provided by the birdsong and looped Arab percussion at the beginning of 'Unknown Caller', which also finds Bono giving his falsetto another impressive work out.
Things get even more experimental on 'Fez - Being Born', a wonderfully intriguing song of two halves that starts with disembodied voices, FM static and other ambient weirdness before giving way to Edge's trademark chiming guitar. Unconventional, but it works.
Listeners looking for autobiographical insight, meanwhile, should proceed immediately to the Will.i.am and string section-assisted 'I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight', a real grower which features such revelatory lines as 'There's a part of me in the chaos that's quiet/And there's a part of you that wants me to riot'.
You also get the strong suspicion that Bono's talking about himself on 'Stand Up Comedy', another dirty white funk workout on which he declares: 'I can stand up for hope, faith, love/Josephine, be careful of small men with big ideas/Stand up to rock stars, Napoleon is in high heels'. Find me a Chris Martin line that self-deprecating and I'll buy you a pint.
U2 revisit Rattle And Hum 'Van Diemen's Land' with the sparse 'White As Snow', a track written for Jim Sheridan's Afghanistan war movie Brothers. Both lyrically and musically it trays into the same territory as Springsteen's The Ghost Of Tom Joad, with an extra twist of Leonard Cohen for good measure.
Eno has decided that the penultimate track, 'Breathe', is 'the best U2 song ever'. While that assessment is perhaps a little over the top, the Beatles-esque track is a genuine standout with Bono evoking the spirit of St John Devine and unnamed ju-ju men, as a hyperactive cello and Larry's tom-toms fight it out in the background.
If ever there was a song for the times, it's the closing 'Cedars of Lebanon', a beautiful half-spoken ballad in which Bono narrates from the point of view of a weary war correspondent - the thing is that you just know that there's a lot of the U2 frontman in there too.
'Choose your enemies carefully 'cos they will define you/Make them interesting 'cos in some ways they will mind you/They're not there in the beginning but when your story ends/Gonna last with you longer than your friends', he pronounces, before the song does the musical equivalent of The Sopranos' last scene and comes to an abrupt halt, ending the record on a suitably low key and yet indisputably high note.
32 years in, and the buggers are still worth every column inch that No Line On The Horizon's going to garner them. To say that U2 fans will love it is a gross understatement. NLOTH is a very powerful record indeed.
STUART CLARK
KEY TRACK: 'Cedars of Lebanon'
Irish Times
U2 No line on the Horizon Mercury ****
No one knows the line on horizon better than U2 – they’ve spent enough of their career gazing meaningfully in its direction. For their third studio album of the noughties, they decided to blur that line and let everything bleed into one vast wall of sound and twisted vision.
U2 brought us to a comfort zone of sorts with the last two albums, but here they’re up for taking a few risks and chancing arms, legs and cojones on this big, brash embrace of an album. It’s not so much throwing their arms around the world as trying to crush it in a big, fuzzy bearhug.
This is a record of twists and turns and death-defying loops, and anyone looking for a quick-fix anthem may be put off by the complexities on offer here. It’s U2’s prog rock album, so if you want to sing along, you’ll need to grab hold of your chin and pay close attention.
Magnificent comes on like Blondie’s Atomic filtered through Bowie’s Heroes, and is the first of three songs that clock in at more than five minutes. The longest one, Moment of Surrender, sees Bono finding – as usual – redemption in the dirt. Though the reference to getting money out of an ATM may be rather badly timed, it at least shows that his mind is still linked to the ordinary world.
Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois have co-songwriting credits on many of the songs, and Eno’s whooshing keyboard sounds and dense production threads through the album. (The tracks produced by Steve Lillywhite seem sparse by comparison.)
Bono seems more passenger than driver here, and he sounds all the better for it. The Edge is in serious guitar hero form, going all Eric Clapton on the solo for Moment of Surrender , then kicking into Jimmy Page mode for the riff of Stand Up Comedy . Adam Clayton’s bass strains the sub-woofers, but Larry Mullen jnr’s drumming is an exercise in keeping the runaway train on track.
The band leave it till the middle section to bring out the quickfire tunes ( I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight, Get on Your Boots and Stand Up Comedy ), then settle into some Eastern atmospherics on Fez – Being Born (Fez, Morocco is where the album sessions began). The Asian flavours linger on the penultimate blow-out, Breathe, and in the final dispatches of Cedars of Lebanon , but the Western-flecked White as Snow , a traditional arrangement with new lyrics, sits comfortably and confidently amongst them.
With No Line on the Horizon , U2 are no longer constrained by perspective or depth, and are free to throw the colours and shapes around and see where it takes them. They may not be the safe home ground of old, but they’ve arrived at a pretty interesting place.
Download tracks: Magnificent, Moment of Surrender, Stand Up Comedy
Irish Independent
U2: the verdict on 'No Line on the Horizon'
John Meagher
They took their time, didn't they? It's been four years and three months since the last U2 studio album -- the longest gap in the band's history. At times, this -- their 12th -- could have been called No Finish on the Horizon, such were the apparent difficulties and insecurities they faced when making it.
Initially, Rick Rubin, the American producer who helped rejuvenate the careers of Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond, was seen as the one that could move the band into exciting new areas. But those sessions, from July 2006, didn't work out and they turned once more to trusted old friends, Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite. The latter has worked on and off with the band since their debut album, Boy, the former pair from 1984's The Unforgettable Fire.
Recording took place in Morocco, New York, London and their Hanover Quay studio in Dublin with up to 50 new songs recorded. They were still tinkering with songs, titles and sequences right up to Christmas, further fuelling online speculation that they were suffering creative paralysis and not confident enough to let go.
And creative difficulties seemed all too apparent on early acquaintance with lead single, "Get On Your Boots." "Is this it?" you could almost hear the punters say when the song was debuted on 2FM last month. Its insistent, fuzzy guitars were fine, although the nonsense lyrics were harder to stomach, but just where was the bold new direction the band and assorted friends had been promising us?
A bold change in direction will not be found on the album either. It won't wrong-foot the listener in the way that Achtung Baby or even Pop did. But suggestions that U2 had lost their mojo are just as unfounded -- and unfair. No Line on the Horizon may not be a masterpiece, but it is unquestionably a very good, consistently strong collection that's every bit the match of their two huge selling albums of this decade, All That You Can't Leave Behind and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. Even "Get On Your Boots" proves to be a grower, working well when heard within the context of the album.
Just shy of 54 minutes long, it's one of their lengthier efforts. And of the 11 tracks, only two could be described as duds (more of which anon). That's not a bad strike rate by anybody's standards. It starts off strongly with the title track, a barnstorming stadium rock tune that could have come from the songwriting stable of Kings of Leon. The young Southerners have supported U2 on the road, and that clearly has had an impact on Bono who sounds uncannily like that band's Caleb Followill in places. Imitation, flattery and all that...
It's followed by one of the album's stand-outs, the aptly titled "Magnificent." This already sounds like a classic U2 song that combines disparate eras of their career in a hugely appealing way -- War-meets-Zooropa, if you will. Even the most avowed U2-hater is likely to struggle to come up with reasons to dislike the Edge's irresistible guitars and muscular rhythm section. It's one of two songs featuring the keyboards of will.i.am and while the Black Eyed Peas' main man is hardly a distinct enough keys player to make you sit up and take notice, Eno's typically smart production takes all the elements and concocts the sort of epic five-minuter that's become his stock-in-trade. Let's just say one of his more recent "clients," Coldplay's Chris Martin, is likely to weep with envy when he hears it.
No Line on the Horizon is, for the most part, an upbeat album. There are several euphoric moments and lots of allusions to redemption. Songs like "Moment of Salvation" -- which, at more than seven minutes long, definitely outstays its welcome -- is loaded with lyrics referencing "soul," "God" and "fire." The atmospheric "Unknown Caller" is cut from the same cloth. Let's face it, it would hardly be a U2 album if Bono wasn't engaged by such themes -- and if you're one of the many who finds this sort of stuff off-putting, much of the album simply won't work for you.
There are plenty of songs that won't have such a divisive effect, however. "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight," for instance, is a massively uplifting number that's bound to be a live favourite when U2 take the show on the road this summer. There's humour too, as Bono, tongue firmly in cheek, notes: "The right to appear ridiculous is something I hold dear." Never a truer word spoken, Bono.
It's not the only self-deprecating moment on the album. "Stand Up Comedy" finds the frontman, who is given to wearing shoes with elevated soles, singing of "Napolean in high heels" before offering the killer line: "Be careful of small men with big ideas." The Edge's guitar playing is raw and dirty -- it's got Queens of the Stone Age written all over it. But the song fails to captivate. It just seems a little too contrived.
The album's most intriguing song is "FEZ -- Coming Home," which is a triumph of Eno's yen for experimentalism over U2's big sound. (In fact, Eno and Lanois share songwriting credits on several tracks.) It was one of the first songs recorded -- during sessions in the Moroccan city that gives the song its title -- and it's a hint about what this album could have sounded like if the band really had thrown caution to the wind. Its electro-ambient intro features the sound of birds singing and the bustle of Moroccan life (it was apparently recorded in the outdoor courtyard of an ancient riad) and Bono referencing the "let me in the sound" line from "Get On Your Boots," before it dissolves into a scattergun rock that shifts and slides into unexpected territory. The tempo changes are surprising and the song boasts a daring that the bulk of the other tracks, for all their merits, simply lack.
As mentioned at the outset, a pair of songs fall some way short of the mark. One of them is "Stand Up Comedy." The other is "Breathe," which finds Bono in semi spoken-word mode, although the song doesn't do enough to draw the listener in.
The plaintive "White As Snow" has no such problem. One of the slower tracks on the album, its intro recalls Sigur Ros while, later, a French horn highlights the evocative lyrics.
Closer "Cedars of Lebanon" is the most overtly political song, and a real grower. Like many of its siblings on this album, its moody atmospheric texture recalls Achtung Baby-era U2. It's a downbeat song on which to conclude an album brimming with life and hope.
No Line on the Horizon is unlikely to disappoint the band's multitudinous fanbase. They haven't reinvented themselves as they have suggested, but instead play to their strengths. Fledgling bands with stadium rock ambitions could certainly learn a thing or two from this album.
After such a long and difficult gestation, the album feels like a triumph. It won't change the world, but it does give Bono, The Edge, Adam and Larry a ticket for world domination once more. Just watch those sales figures roll in.
No Line on the Horizon is released on February 27. Lead single "Get On Your Boots" is released in physical format today.