‘No Line on the Horizon’ – U2 Return to lead the way in the revolution in the music business, Viva La Vida!

No Line on the Horizon spread all over the Internet. Supposedly, this third and presumably final leak — after Bono’s infamous Beach House Broadcast occurred when an Australian website owned by the band’s label put the songs on sale too early. The album has also been made available (like Guns & Roses) to stream on MySpace a week ahead of schedule!

Recorded and co-produced with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois in Morocco, New York, London and Dublin, it’s a murkier, moodier and more meditative work that tempers the band’s anthemic tendencies with plenty of electronics, strings and spacious sonics. It’s not quite the reinvention that Lanois claimed. Either way, we get the feeling the band might be drawing a line in the sand with this one, just as they did with The Joshua Tree when the ‘Live’ album followed and they then ‘ripped it up and started again’ what price an ‘electroguitarfuelleddrumandbass’ return in 2012!

NO LINE ON THE HORIZON

A typically muscular U2 opener, after a few seconds of feedback, the songs bursts open with a noisy cloud of mosquito-buzz guitars and a thudding, bottom-heavy groove. The verses are all tension; the chiming, pretty chorus provides the relief. A decent headnodder.

its simple, direct hard-rock style ostensibly augmented with just the most discreet of decorative titivation – the spangly effect on the guitar, the pastel keyboard backdrop – though it probably took months to get it to sound that simple. Key lyric: “Every night I have the same dream/ I’m hatching some plot, scheming some scheme.”

MAGNIFICENT

The intro’s disparate elements shuffle nervously around for a short while, until firmly supplanted by a typical Edge guitar riff, riding a slightly funkier rhythm than usual. An ominous, Sabbathy lick does a weird dance with some bleepy electro sonics. Then the whole thing subtly shifts into more typical U2 terrain, complete with Edge’s skritchy jangle, some string accents and includes a swoonsome slide-guitar break in the middle-eight, added keyboards by will.i.am, and rather too much heartfelt howling by Bono. Like many U2 songs, and many soul songs generally, it’s poised delicately on the cusp of the sacred and the secular, applicable either way. This album’s “One”, in other words. Key lyric: “From the womb my first cry, it was a joyful noise.”

MOMENT OF SURRENDER

A quiet stumble of percussion loops gently around, tinted with cello and subdued synth tones, and organ coming to the fore as Bono enters. But as he becomes more impassioned, the music remains languid and balm-like – just the right combination for a song about everyday epiphanies, and how they seem to cover the recipient in a cloak of invisibility, isolated within themselves. Between the title and lyrics about Bono tying himself with wire and riding the subway “through the stations of the cross,” this one is pretty heavy on the religious metaphors — though it’s clearly about love. The languid pace, lush keys and electronic glitches don’t really lighten the mood. At seven minutes-plus, it’s one of the band’s longest songs — and feels like it.  Key lyric: “It’s not if I believe in love, but if love believes in me.”

UNKNOWN CALLER

Another long one, Caller gradually builds from glistening guitar arpeggios into a dark, lushly restrained rocker laced with churchy organ and French horn — and a nice solo from Edge. Too bad the barked backup vocals are straight out of Devo. The opening tom-tom tattoo and glittery guitar twinkle swiftly resolves into a routine arpeggiated U2 riff, tarted up towards the end with churchy organ and French horn, and The Edge’s least interesting guitar solo. Rubbish computer metaphors spoil an otherwise interesting evocation of existential bad faith and second-guessing of oneself. Key lyric: “I had driven to the scene of the accident/ And I sat there waiting for me.”

I’LL GO CRAZY IF I DON‘T GO CRAZY TONIGHT

Disappointing exercise in standard U2 yearning, with diminishing returns on the same theme as “I Still Haven’t ound What I’m Looking For”, despite Bono’s epigrammic lyric style. It is sonically different from the rest of the album, probably due to Steve Lillywhite’s production. Edge backs off slightly to let Larry Mullen and Adam Clayton lay down one of their slow-rolling beats. Pity Bono spoils the mood right off the bat by wailing the title in an unhinged falsetto. The actual chorus is pretty strong, though. Perhaps the hookiest one on the disc so far. Key lyric: “Every generation gets a chance to change the world/ Pity the nation that will listen to your boys and girls/ ‘Cos the sweetest melody is the one we haven’t heard.”