powerhour24
ONE love, blood, life
Ouch, you're living up to your username, I'm all for objectivity but it would be mean to give it a bad review with them on the cover, that's a tainted collector's item waiting to happen.
First proper album reviews - Irish Times, Irish Independent and Hot Press
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- Start date
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mofo_spacejunk
The Fly
Hey did you notice these lyrics quoted in the first review re: NLOTH?
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'.
This couplet isn't in NLOTH2, yet a few days ago someone here posted the lyrics of NLOTH and quoted this couplet.
I actually doubted it because I didn't think Bono would sing this. The poster has also listed SUC and Magnificent. I wonder where that person's source is????
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'.
This couplet isn't in NLOTH2, yet a few days ago someone here posted the lyrics of NLOTH and quoted this couplet.
I actually doubted it because I didn't think Bono would sing this. The poster has also listed SUC and Magnificent. I wonder where that person's source is????
jonnytakeawalk
Refugee
SecretFly
War Child
Um that's not good
All other reviews were good though
You cant tell if an album is a masterpiece with 1 or 2 listens.
Vlad n U 2
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The Irish Independent review rates NLOTH the lowest out of the 3 reviews, and still gives it a very good. Loved the Hot Press review though. 
shart1780
Rock n' Roll Doggie
If I hear "self-deprecating" one more time in a NLOTH review I'm going to jump off a bridge.
johndarling
War Child
^Don't do that!
TWO things come to mind right off the bat.
1. I can't stand Jim Sheridan.
2. I
the line about Napoleon. That's so hilarious that Bono has some idea what an apallingly patriarchal chauvanist he is. He has a ways to go but a tiny bit of awareness is so much better than none.
Oh and the linear/in your ear is really funny.
The lyrics sound to be his best by far.
TWO things come to mind right off the bat.
1. I can't stand Jim Sheridan.
2. I
the line about Napoleon. That's so hilarious that Bono has some idea what an apallingly patriarchal chauvanist he is. He has a ways to go but a tiny bit of awareness is so much better than none. Oh and the linear/in your ear is really funny.
The lyrics sound to be his best by far.
last unicorn
Blue Crack Addict
Um that's not good
All other reviews were good though
I don't get it: Why is it bad? I've read all the reviews and none, including the one you're quoting, is bashing the album. All the reviews are mostly positive. We have to get used to the fact that not every reviewer will be kissing U2's ass, there will be some bad reviews in the future, but the reviews we have hear are overall positive.
And the Times guy is an idiot, no matter how positive he thinks of NLOTH. He lost me with the first sentence. What a useless article.
Vlad n U 2
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There's only been one negative review, and that was the article by Andrew P.Street. That bastard! 
shart1780
Rock n' Roll Doggie
For all we know Andrew P. Street could be more right than these other reviewers.
elevation
Acrobat
I actually quite liked The Times review - couldn't agree with the 80's stuff but he says this album is much better than their last two... That's a good thing ...
From the article
A bizarre historical pendulum appears to be at work here. When the Republican Ronald Reagan was in the White House, U2 made thumpingly earnest and conservative records. Under the Democrat Bill Clinton, they loosened up and embraced sleazy hedonism. With George W. Bush, back to one-dimensional pomposity again. This bodes well for their albums in the Obama era.
I haven't really thought of this one .... Anyone, something I really like bout the clips is the playfullness....
From the article
A bizarre historical pendulum appears to be at work here. When the Republican Ronald Reagan was in the White House, U2 made thumpingly earnest and conservative records. Under the Democrat Bill Clinton, they loosened up and embraced sleazy hedonism. With George W. Bush, back to one-dimensional pomposity again. This bodes well for their albums in the Obama era.
I haven't really thought of this one .... Anyone, something I really like bout the clips is the playfullness....
last unicorn
Blue Crack Addict
Yes, some positivity can seriously harm your health.
There is no right or wrong, it's all subjective.
shart1780
Rock n' Roll Doggie
Then why is everyone pissing on Andrew P. Street? Acting like he doesn't "get" it.
Vlad n U 2
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He was trying to be funny with that thing about Adam etc.
PookaMacP
War Child
Which is why I think we should be wary about any star rating given by any review. If it was me reviewing a record after two listens, even if it was the greatest thing I'd ever heard I'd be extremely reluctant to give it more than 4 in case it turned out to lose its sparkle eventually. Similarly, giving a record three stars is hedging your bets nicely. I think these reviews are interesting only for the initial insight they give and the first impressions they offer us of the album. Personally, I'd put more stock into reviews by magazines like The Word which only reviews albums after they've been released so they've had time to digest them.
Having said that, I think the Irish Times review is probably the most positive for me. You have to remember that we Irish are notoriously harsh on fame and celebrity and that newspaper's critics aren't exactly renowned for loving U2, so to be so positive is a good thing. Also, from a personal standpoint, I think his comment that 'If you want to sing along, pay attention' suggests a slow-burner of an album that reveals itself over time and to me sounds infinitely more interesting than the last two records. Here's hoping.
shart1780
Rock n' Roll Doggie
He was trying to be funny with that thing about Adam etc.
His review was pretty funny.
Look at some of the reviews for HTDAAB. They made the album sound amazingly good. And, well you know how it turned out.
Vlad n U 2
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shart1780
Rock n' Roll Doggie
You can say that again my fine feathered friend!
Saracene
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
Wow, I can't stand this guy right from opening line
Not for the "hating U2" bit, which is fair enough, but the "right-thinking people" bit.
Vlad n U 2
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adypole
Refugee
I speak for the cockatoos.
All we need now's the little old lady.
last unicorn
Blue Crack Addict
"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."
NLOTH has great lyrics. The lyrics of the album version will be different than on the single version.
There are actually people who find that album very good, no matter how hard some people here try to sneak some Bomb-bashing into almost every post they make.
last unicorn
Blue Crack Addict
I really like the Bach reference. Has there been any other U2 song that was inspired by a classic piece?
shart1780
Rock n' Roll Doggie
There are alot of people who don't like it too. And sneak it in? I think it's pretty relevant to this thread.
standrums
War Child
Great point - well put!Everything I read gives me the thought that this is UF and Zooropa having a child called No Line.
And if so, I couldn't think of anything better.
last unicorn
Blue Crack Addict
No it isn't.
SecretFly
War Child
Trademark flourishes as U2 tick all the right boxes
Irish Examiner, February 14, 2009
SPEAKING to the press in late 2007, Bono hinted U2’s next album might well be the most experimental of their career.
The recording sessions had, he revealed, yielded a "a lot of hardcore trance", whilst The Edge’s guitar playing was, said the singer, verging on heavy metal.
Thankfully, the spectre of a U2 LP in the style of the Prodigy hasn’t come to pass. If anything, No Line On The Horizon is the most conventional collection they have put together since the 1980s. Having sloughed off their earnest image on 1991’s Acthung Baby!, only to anxiously re-embrace it a decade later on All That You Can’t Leave Behind, the band has spent much of their recent history in a state of nervous flux — a period from which they have finally emerged with a record that adroitly brings together the best bits from their various incarnations.
Recorded in Dublin, London and Morocco with assistance from the group’s three longtime collaborators, Brian Eno, Steve Lillywhite and Daniel Lanois, No Line On The Horizon packs all of U2’s trademark flourishes onto a single disc.
There’s a nod towards their pedal to the floor Vertigo period on the single Get On Your Boots — a molten rocker that rides a thumping treated riff, over which Bono delivers his finest angst-ridden shriek. It’s a sensibility that is repeated on the title track — one guesses this was the song Bono was referring to when he claimed The Edge had ‘gone hardcore’. Here, a beefy slab of reverb doffs a hat to the ‘desert metal’ of outfits such as Queens of the Stone Age, whilst also referencing psychedelic rock and even cribbing a few tricks from The Killers (quite a reversal considering how much the Las Vegas band have taken from U2).
But elsewhere the tone is markedly more retrospective as U2 dip into their full arsenal of tricks and tics. This is probably a reflection of No Line On The Horizon’s convoluted recording process. Coming off their last world tour in early 2006, the band had promised to put out a new album within 12 months. Initially, they hooked up with Rick Rubin, the career reviving ‘song doctor’ whose intervention has helped rehabilitate artists as diverse as Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond and, most recently, Metallica.
Yet things didn’t quite gel. Rather than seeking to re-imagine their sound, the group decided to revert to first principles and sought out the three producers who had served as midwives to their landmark 80s album: Eno, Lillywhite and Lanois. One thing they did change, however, was the scenery — in mid-2008, the foursome rented a compound in the city of Fez in Morocco, where they spent several months hammering out ideas with Eno.
No Line On The Horizon is mercifully free of clunky world-music influences. That’s not to say some of the setting hasn’t seeped into the playing. Indeed, the album’s most interesting diversions, the experimental Unknown Caller and Fez — Being Born will come as a endearing surprise to anyone who believed U2 have long ago ceased to be innovators.
On Unknown Caller, Eno’s influence is immediately apparent: it opens with a loop of Arabic rhythms and a sampled bird tweet before morphing into a widescreen torch song. Even more intriguing is Fez, which may well be U2’s most left-field venture since the overtly experimental 1993 album Zooropa. Sounding, in the best sense, like a Radiohead B-side, it begins with a swirl of disembodied voices, churning static and ebbing beats, which eventually give way to a fantastic Edge solo and swirling prayer chants. For these moments alone, No Line On The Horizon deserves to be fast-tracked into the U2 hall of fame.
Still, too much weird stuff would risk alienating U2’s core constituency — the earnest rock fans of middle America. With that audience in mind, Magnificent delivers a stadium-sized Edge solo and Moment of Surrender contains lashings of free-form emoting from Bono — it’s one of the few moments where the singer sounds as if he’s the only one in the driving seat. You can imagine him fetching up in the studio fresh from lunch with Tony Blair, determined to heal humanity through the holy power of music — in other words, it’s the sort of blue-chip sanctimoniousness which the world expects — and fans demand — of U2.
The tone turns increasingly soulful over the closing straits. Written for Jim Sheridan’s Afghanistan war movie Brothers, the stripped down White As Snow could, for instance, be an updating of Rattle and Hum. Singing in a sparse croon, Bono is devoid of ego while countrified rhythm playing from Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr gives the track the air of a campfire ballad. From the ghost of Robert Johnson to the spirit of The Beatles, Breathe — which Brian Eno has declared to be U2’s best ever — is a psychedelic epic, with a kitchen sink load of orchestration and enough mellow emoting to have Chris Martin breaking out in an envious rash. It’s not quite what you expect of U2 — but it’s interesting to see them have a stab at contemporary arena rock’s vogue for heartfelt balladry.
It closes with arguably its strongest three minutes, Cedars Of Lebanon — a whispered lament which finds Bono emoting in an exhausted croak. Parsing the lyrics, he seems to be addressing the Middle East conflict. But there’s no pat sermonising.
With an understatedness that he might do wise to incorporate into his public persona, the singer whispers his way through an ennui-soaked ballad while guitars shift tentatively in the background. Recalling the less over-the-top moments of The Joshua Tree, it’s a reminder U2 have always made the most sense when they jettison the bombast and sing from the heart.
No Line On The Horizon is released on March 2.
© Irish Examiner, 2009.
Trademark flourishes as U2 tick all the right boxes | U2 news article from @U2
Irish Examiner, February 14, 2009
SPEAKING to the press in late 2007, Bono hinted U2’s next album might well be the most experimental of their career.
The recording sessions had, he revealed, yielded a "a lot of hardcore trance", whilst The Edge’s guitar playing was, said the singer, verging on heavy metal.
Thankfully, the spectre of a U2 LP in the style of the Prodigy hasn’t come to pass. If anything, No Line On The Horizon is the most conventional collection they have put together since the 1980s. Having sloughed off their earnest image on 1991’s Acthung Baby!, only to anxiously re-embrace it a decade later on All That You Can’t Leave Behind, the band has spent much of their recent history in a state of nervous flux — a period from which they have finally emerged with a record that adroitly brings together the best bits from their various incarnations.
Recorded in Dublin, London and Morocco with assistance from the group’s three longtime collaborators, Brian Eno, Steve Lillywhite and Daniel Lanois, No Line On The Horizon packs all of U2’s trademark flourishes onto a single disc.
There’s a nod towards their pedal to the floor Vertigo period on the single Get On Your Boots — a molten rocker that rides a thumping treated riff, over which Bono delivers his finest angst-ridden shriek. It’s a sensibility that is repeated on the title track — one guesses this was the song Bono was referring to when he claimed The Edge had ‘gone hardcore’. Here, a beefy slab of reverb doffs a hat to the ‘desert metal’ of outfits such as Queens of the Stone Age, whilst also referencing psychedelic rock and even cribbing a few tricks from The Killers (quite a reversal considering how much the Las Vegas band have taken from U2).
But elsewhere the tone is markedly more retrospective as U2 dip into their full arsenal of tricks and tics. This is probably a reflection of No Line On The Horizon’s convoluted recording process. Coming off their last world tour in early 2006, the band had promised to put out a new album within 12 months. Initially, they hooked up with Rick Rubin, the career reviving ‘song doctor’ whose intervention has helped rehabilitate artists as diverse as Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond and, most recently, Metallica.
Yet things didn’t quite gel. Rather than seeking to re-imagine their sound, the group decided to revert to first principles and sought out the three producers who had served as midwives to their landmark 80s album: Eno, Lillywhite and Lanois. One thing they did change, however, was the scenery — in mid-2008, the foursome rented a compound in the city of Fez in Morocco, where they spent several months hammering out ideas with Eno.
No Line On The Horizon is mercifully free of clunky world-music influences. That’s not to say some of the setting hasn’t seeped into the playing. Indeed, the album’s most interesting diversions, the experimental Unknown Caller and Fez — Being Born will come as a endearing surprise to anyone who believed U2 have long ago ceased to be innovators.
On Unknown Caller, Eno’s influence is immediately apparent: it opens with a loop of Arabic rhythms and a sampled bird tweet before morphing into a widescreen torch song. Even more intriguing is Fez, which may well be U2’s most left-field venture since the overtly experimental 1993 album Zooropa. Sounding, in the best sense, like a Radiohead B-side, it begins with a swirl of disembodied voices, churning static and ebbing beats, which eventually give way to a fantastic Edge solo and swirling prayer chants. For these moments alone, No Line On The Horizon deserves to be fast-tracked into the U2 hall of fame.
Still, too much weird stuff would risk alienating U2’s core constituency — the earnest rock fans of middle America. With that audience in mind, Magnificent delivers a stadium-sized Edge solo and Moment of Surrender contains lashings of free-form emoting from Bono — it’s one of the few moments where the singer sounds as if he’s the only one in the driving seat. You can imagine him fetching up in the studio fresh from lunch with Tony Blair, determined to heal humanity through the holy power of music — in other words, it’s the sort of blue-chip sanctimoniousness which the world expects — and fans demand — of U2.
The tone turns increasingly soulful over the closing straits. Written for Jim Sheridan’s Afghanistan war movie Brothers, the stripped down White As Snow could, for instance, be an updating of Rattle and Hum. Singing in a sparse croon, Bono is devoid of ego while countrified rhythm playing from Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr gives the track the air of a campfire ballad. From the ghost of Robert Johnson to the spirit of The Beatles, Breathe — which Brian Eno has declared to be U2’s best ever — is a psychedelic epic, with a kitchen sink load of orchestration and enough mellow emoting to have Chris Martin breaking out in an envious rash. It’s not quite what you expect of U2 — but it’s interesting to see them have a stab at contemporary arena rock’s vogue for heartfelt balladry.
It closes with arguably its strongest three minutes, Cedars Of Lebanon — a whispered lament which finds Bono emoting in an exhausted croak. Parsing the lyrics, he seems to be addressing the Middle East conflict. But there’s no pat sermonising.
With an understatedness that he might do wise to incorporate into his public persona, the singer whispers his way through an ennui-soaked ballad while guitars shift tentatively in the background. Recalling the less over-the-top moments of The Joshua Tree, it’s a reminder U2 have always made the most sense when they jettison the bombast and sing from the heart.
No Line On The Horizon is released on March 2.
© Irish Examiner, 2009.
Trademark flourishes as U2 tick all the right boxes | U2 news article from @U2
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