Simply, what this amounts to is the best U2 album since Achtung Baby.
He is still singing about singing, all over No Line on the Horizon, U2's first album in nearly five years and their best, in its textural exploration and tenacious melodic grip, since 1991's Achtung Baby.
No Line on the Horizon offers idealism spliced with new attitude and the same old grace, and is all the better for it.
What No Line on the Horizon lacks in radical experimentation it makes up for in sheer strength of melody. The album is loose but never tossed off, joyous but never gratuitously so. U2 sound on No Line like they believe in themselves again, and as a result it is that much easier to believe in 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.
The classic-in-waiting .. is the seven-minute slow-burner Moment Of Surrender, its Brian Eno “rhythm loops” and existential lyrical questions echoing the anthemic universality of One.
It’s U2’s least immediate album – but there’s something about it that suggests it may be one of their most enduring.
By this point, it's within their rights to utilize pieces of their past in building a new present for themselves, as long as they don't half-ass it and start turning out inferior remakes of their old tunes. That's not what's going on here, and if anything, No Line is ultimately a more visceral and memorable effort than either of the band's other two 21st century offerings.
Horizon ... is an eccentric album — but for a variety of reasons. It’s not that the band sounds unoriginal or dated, it’s just that this particular sound has over-saturated the modern music scene.
With coproducers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois explicitly included in the songwriting, it’s an effort to tinker and rough up and refine anew their music’s essence — with nobly sketchy results.
Upon first listen, No Line on the Horizon seems as if it would be a classic grower, an album that makes sense with repeated spins, but that repetition only makes the album more elusive, revealing not that U2 went into the studio with a dense, complicated blueprint, but rather, they had no plan at all.
On balance, No Line on the Horizon represents what October did all those years ago: a decent step forward that nevertheless recalls the past more clearly than it spells out the future.
At the end of the day, No Line on the Horizon is an easy album to dismiss and an even harder disc to love, and some people will be ready to call it a masterpiece just as others are ready to deem it an outright failure.
No Line is filled with stadium anthems, soaring power chords, “important” lyrics and polished production. If you love U2, then you’ll love this album. If you hate U2, this record probably won’t change that.
U2 might try to pass Horizon off as atmospheric, but it's really just a grab bag of underdeveloped ideas that never seemed to command the band's full attention.
Unfortunately, too much of NLOTH sounds staid and uninspired, again maybe due to the changing musical landscape that was going on all around them during the making of the record.
Horizon is clearly playing not to lose-- it's a defensive gesture, and a rather pitiful one at that.
It seems like this is a hot take, but much to my own surprise, I really like this project. It's easily the band's best since "Achtung Baby" in my opinion. Despite a couple dodgy moments, it's stronger and more musically interesting than anything they've done in a while, and I'm not sure why it seems to be so unpopular, both among fans and the band members. I feel like if they had stuck with their original experimental intentions a bit more, and cut "Get on Your Boots", which ... read more
Keep in mind THIS album topped Rolling’s Stone’s best albums of 2009, beating the xx’s self-titled, Veckatimest and Merriweather Post Pavilion
why
In my opinion, U2 albums tend to have a point where they fall back on their generic sound, but "No Line on the Horizon" is different. While I don't love the album as a whole, I appreciate that the band seems to be trying with almost every song. After the successes of their previous albums, it was clear that this next one would be important for the band's future. They're leaning more heavily on electronic and experimental sounds than they have in a long time, which works well with the ... read more
Why in the FUCK did Rolling Stone name this album of the year over xx and Merriweather Post Pavilion?!!?
Este fue el ultimo album donde U2 dio su ultima luz de magia y de hacer un buen disco. Aun asi en cada album va a ver un punto donde todo se derumba y deja de ser memorable a hacer un proyecto olvidable.
1 | No Line on the Horizon 4:12 | 82 |
2 | Magnificent 5:24 | 86 |
3 | Moment of Surrender 7:24 | 90 |
4 | Unknown Caller 6:02 | 85 |
5 | I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight 4:13 | 74 |
6 | Get On Your Boots 3:23 | 45 |
7 | Stand Up Comedy 3:50 | 56 |
8 | FEZ / Being Born 5:16 | 73 |
9 | White as Snow 4:41 | 72 |
10 | Breathe 5:00 | 75 |
11 | Cedars of Lebanon 4:20 | 75 |
#1 | / | Rolling Stone |
#9 | / | Q Magazine |
#27 | / | NPR |
#31 | / | Amazon |
#32 | / | Spin |
#46 | / | Beats Per Minute |
#100 | / | Consequence of Sound |