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“Line” of
the Times
With a boost from his
rejuvenated mates, Bono
rediscovers his calling
by Charles Aaron

I’LL GO CRAZ Y IF I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” reads like a bumper sticker on an SUV in a Wal-Mart parking lot—a meek yelp of rebellion from a mortgage-stressed husband who dreams of creeping out for Nascar Bud Shootout night at Hooters. But on the song of that title from U2’s 12th studio album, Bono belts out the line with liberating glee—like a giddy favela kid swinging onto an arm of Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue. And we’re right there swinging along too, because when surging vox and chiming guitar and frisky beat congregate in the proper spirit, and when the foursome don’t sound like geezers defensively proclaiming their conceptual or aesthetic vigor, U2 still inspire flashes of elation, awe, and yes, hope like no other rock band.

And for most of us, that’s enough—they created a sound, they shrewdly expanded and reinvented it, and they never became ghoulish, price-gouging buffoons like the Stones. But unlike 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind (the follow-up to 1997’s electronica-tweaked misfire Pop), No Line on the Horizon isn’t content

U2 No Line on the Horizon

•••••••••• MYSPACE AMAZON

[rAting]

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Trash Classic

to reaffirm U2’s iconic sonic virtues.

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.

The title-track opener masses the

Edge’s guitar and synth tracks into a dense whir and swirl amid gurning polyrhythms, giving Bono’s whoa-ohs a gritty context (as if

he’s fronting a reanimated Killing
Joke). “Magnificent” could’ve been
a standard U2 secular hymn, but it’s
constructed like a Sasha & Digweed
trance anthem, with peak-hour drum
programming and electronic swoosh.
“Moment of Surrender,” a celebrity-
at-the-crossroads soul ballad, is given
an ambient gospel sweep that’s both haunted and
joyful. More clumsily, “Stand Up Comedy” and

ILLUSTRATION BY LARA TOMLIN

DO WNLOAD NEW MP3s AT SPIN.COM / APRIL 2009 73