U2 - No Line on the Horizon

[primushead]

I've only heard the single (Get on your Boots) but I haven't been too excited about that...is this album any good?  Should I get it?

I love U2.  I really do.  I just don't want to get this and be pissed off.  

Anyway, I think I'm gonna go out and get this album...with OR without you.

[Bumbeli]

I've only heard the single (Get on your Boots) but I haven't been too excited about that...is this album any good?  Should I get it?

I love U2.  I really do.  I just don't want to get this and be pissed off.  

Anyway, I think I'm gonna go out and get this album...with OR without you.

Great post, it's 1 am in the morning here and you already made my day.

Should I get it? Tell me! I'll get it, I don't care what you think.  :D

Thank you

[Kenny76]

I also love U2.  Sorry to say this, but I'm very disappointed by it.  I'm even annoyed by it.  But opinion is divided.  I think it does get better than Get On Your Boots but not much.  It also gets worse.

[ycartrob]

AMG no likey; they only rate Pop as being "worse" than this one. Ouch!

A rock & roll open secret: U2 care very much about what other people say about them. Ever since they hit the big time in 1987 with The Joshua Tree, every album is a response to the last — rather, a response to the response, a way to correct the mistakes of the last album: Achtung Baby erased the roots rock experiment Rattle and Hum, All That You Can't Leave Behind straightened out the fumbling Pop, and 2009's No Line on the Horizon is a riposte to the suggestion they played it too safe on 2006's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. After scrapping sessions with Rick Rubin and flirting with will.i.am, U2 reunited with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois (here billed as "Danny" for some reason), who not only produced The Joshua Tree but pointed the group toward aural architecture on The Unforgettable Fire. Much like All That You Can't and Atomic Bomb, which were largely recorded with their first producer, Steve Lillywhite, this is a return to the familiar for U2, but where their Lillywhite LPs are characterized by muscle, the Eno/Lanois records are where the band take risks, and so it is here that U2 attempts to recapture that spacy, mysterious atmosphere of The Unforgettable Fire and then take it further. Contrary to the suggestion of the clanking, sputtering first single "Get on Your Boots" — its riffs and "Pump It Up" chant sounding like a cheap mashup stitched together in GarageBand — this isn't a garish, gaudy electro-dalliance in the vein of Pop. Apart from a stilted middle section — "Boots," the hamfisted white-boy funk "Stand Up Comedy," and the not-nearly-as-bad-as-its-title anthem "I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight"; tellingly, the only three songs here to not bear co-writing credits from Eno and Lanois — No Line on the Horizon is all austere grey tones and midtempo meditation. It's a record that yearns to be intimate but U2 don't do intimate, they only do majestic, or as Bono sings on one of the albums best tracks, they do "Magnificent." Here, as on "No Line on the Horizon" and "Breathe," U2 strike that unmistakable blend of soaring, widescreen sonics and unflinching openhearted emotion that's been their trademark, turning the intimate into something hauntingly universal. These songs resonate deeper and longer than anything on Atomic Bomb, their grandeur almost seeming effortless. It's the rest of the record that illustrates how difficult it is to sound so magnificent. With the exception of that strained middle triptych, the rest of the album is in the vein of "No Line," "Horizon," and "Breathe," only quieter and unfocused, with its ideas drifting instead of gelling. Too often, the album whispers in a murmur so quiet it's quite easy to ignore — "White as Snow," an adaptation of a traditional folk tune, and "Cedars of Lebanon," its verses not much more than a recitation, simmer so slowly they seem to evaporate — but at least these poorly defined subtleties sustain the hazily melancholy mood of No Line on the Horizon. When U2, Eno, and Lanois push too hard — the ill-begotten techno-speak overload of "Unknown Caller," the sound sculpture of "Fez-Being Born" — the ideas collapse like a pyramid of cards, the confusion amplifying the aimless stretches of the album, turning it into a murky muddle. 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.

[mjkoehler]

I gave up on them after Zooropa, but in reality after Achtung Bay. It was all downhill after Achtung. You don't make an album that perfect and make anything better sadly.

[ycartrob]

I gave up on them after Zooropa, but in reality after Achtung Bay. It was all downhill after Achtung. You don't make an album that perfect and make anything better sadly.

yep

[primushead]

That's what I was afraid of.  I know they haven't really been one of those 'relevant' bands that still cranks out awesome studio stuff.  

Ney, they have been relegated into putting albums out just for the sake of having new material to play on massive stadium tours...

...still, I'm going to buy it.  I'm a sucker for U2.  I even thought Pop was an okay album. :-/

[Penny Lane]

i've heard get on your boots and magnificent----it's just not my thing. i've only liked a handful of songs in their last few albums.

rolling stone gave it 5 stars...don't get it

[primushead]

i've heard get on your boots and magnificent----it's just not my thing. i've only liked a handful of songs in their last few albums.

rolling stone gave it 5 stars...don't get it

If a magazine has the Jonas Brothers on their cover, I don't listen to anything they have to say.

[Penny Lane]

i've heard get on your boots and magnificent----it's just not my thing. i've only liked a handful of songs in their last few albums.

rolling stone gave it 5 stars...don't get it

If a magazine has the Jonas Brothers on their cover, I don't listen to anything they have to say.

they love the Jacket so i have been giving them a chance. But yeah, you're right. they also love the killers and britney spears. what am i thinking...

[Penny Lane]

just read this

Mayor Bloomberg is expected to rename part of W.53rd St. at Broadway "U2 Way."

The temporary street renaming coincides with the release of the band's new CD, "No Line on the Horizon," and the kickoff last night of their five-night gig on "Late Show With David Letterman."

Besides winning Grammys and being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Bono and his bandmates are known worldwide for fighting for human rights and social justice. [Daily News]

[Jbones72]

I've avoided listening to anything from it, other than stuff played on the radio, until I get it. Seems like it's going to be be a love or hate it album. I hear they are going to put out another one later this year with stuff they recorded with Eno/Lanois in Morocco. WRXP in NYC is playing all U2 today which is cool, haven't had anything like this in NYC since WNEW went away.

[Penny Lane]

I've avoided listening to anything from it, other than stuff played on the radio, until I get it. Seems like it's going to be be a love or hate it album. I hear they are going to put out another one later this year with stuff they recorded with Eno/Lanois in Morocco. WRXP in NYC is playing all U2 today which is cool, haven't had anything like this in NYC since WNEW went away.

i've been listening to 101.9 all day. they have steve lillywhite in the studio this morning and Dan Auerbach in the studio yesterday morning. i love this station!!

[Jbones72]

I've avoided listening to anything from it, other than stuff played on the radio, until I get it. Seems like it's going to be be a love or hate it album. I hear they are going to put out another one later this year with stuff they recorded with Eno/Lanois in Morocco. WRXP in NYC is playing all U2 today which is cool, haven't had anything like this in NYC since WNEW went away.

i've been listening to 101.9 all day. they have steve lillywhite in the studio this morning and Dan Auerbach in the studio yesterday morning. i love this station!!

me too, isn't great to hear interesting music interviews on the radio again!

[Penny Lane]

yes i think matt pinfield is really connected in the biz, which helps.

[capt. scotty]

yes i think matt pinfield is really connected in the biz, which helps.

that bald head fat bastard who used to be on MTV?!!?!?

I figured he was still following Soundgarden around on the road

[Jbones72]

yes i think matt pinfield is really connected in the biz, which helps.

i was happy when they got him, i remember him from way back when i was in high school on fm 106.3 in jersey! sadly like wnew that station is long gone. i have to try and get to some of the events rxp has in the city.

[tbone]

NEWS FLASH:

The new U2 record is beyond bad.  

That's a tough thing to say for someone who has loved this band for more than 20 years.

U2 has never released a "bomb" imo - until this one.

The record is plain awful.  Pop is a masterpiece by comparison and Zooropa was much, much better - which is saying something.

I can only imagine how much David Fricke was paid to offer up a 5 star review in RS... lol  I mean - Achtung (my personal fave - and arguably the best thing they have ever created) was given either 4 or 4.5 (i can't recall) in RS back in 91.

Don't believe the hype - this one is a stinker with no substance whatsoever... worse - it sounds straight up terrible.... which totally sucks i know but i've given it 7-10 spins and know to trust my ears at this point.

Spend your time w/ the new Animal Collective, Andrew Bird, M Ward, Neko, etc. instead...

[The DARK]

Not getting the negative vibes here. I really like several songs on there, and I can't think of any that I outright hate. Lyrics are also much improved.

[buaawwww]

I gave up on them after Zooropa, but in reality after Achtung Bay. It was all downhill after Achtung. You don't make an album that perfect and make anything better sadly.

yep

Hmm... gotta say I couldn't disagree with you guys any more.  Zooropa was very good, has alot of excellent songs on it (the title track, Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car, The First Time) and POP is to me criminally underrated.