Word: rock
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...flourish of modesty or a side effect of middle age, but U2 has steadily softened its ambition during its 30-year existence, and that's not such a bad thing. Early on, Bono sang with a moral force that suggested Cotton Mather with a mullet; not satisfied to rock you on "Sunday Bloody Sunday," he needed to convert you. In the towering period that spanned The Joshua Tree to Zooropa, U2 made stadium-size art rock with huge melodies that allowed Bono to throw his arms around the world while bending its ear about social justice. After...
...group people of all ages can agree on. Except that U2 isn't quite content. After an almost five-year absence, during which Bono was named one of TIME's Persons of the Year for his work on global poverty and the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the band returns on March 3 with an album called No Line on the Horizon. It offers up a few new hits for the wedding playlist, but No Line on the Horizon is mostly restless, tentative and confused. It's not terrible, but it feels like...
...best albums (The Joshua Tree; Achtung Baby), the answer is both. But convergence rarely happens here. Some songs - like "Stand Up Comedy," a goofball attempt at funk - are explicitly told through Bono's rose-colored specs. ("Stand up to rock stars, Napoleon is in high heels/ Josephine, be careful of small men with big ideas.") But on the otherwise breezy power pop of "I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight," the rock star can't resist intruding with a lyric that first appeared as a pull quote in several of his magazine profiles ("The right...
...sound doesn't provide much refuge. Work on No Line on the Horizon began in 2007, when the band decamped to Morocco with Brian Eno and Danny Lanois, the men who oversaw U2's 1980s transformation from anthem singers to makers of textured, daring rock. As a hedge, the band also paid visits to Dublin and London to check in with Steve Lillywhite, who helped U2 crank out some of its muscular early and recent hits. (Most bands would have to take out a second mortgage to cover the per diem for just one of these producers...
...sound at home rumbling through the verses and blowing out the choruses in the old familiar way. But as No Line trudges on, it slumps under the weight of its own need to surprise. Eno invented the bleeps and whirs that are mixed into the background of so many rock albums, and used as seasoning, his effects still have the power to create mystery. (On the title track, it sounds as if Bono is duetting with a quasar - very cool.) The problem is that too often Eno's tricks are the steak. Melody - the most surprising effect of all - dodges...