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Still At The Top: The Edge, Adam, Bono And Larry
Sunday Mail, February 01, 2009
Billy Sloan
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U2 finally unveiled their new album No Line On The Horizon behind closed doors and under the strictest security.
But first again with the big music exclusives… Email were there to hear it.
We were invited by Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr to get a sneak preview of their eagerly awaited 12th studio album – not released until March 2.
And it’s a cracker, up there with U2 classics such as Achtung Baby, The Joshua Tree and All That You Can’t Leave Behind.
The Irish supergroup took the wraps off No Line On The Horizon in the chic Saatchi art gallery at the famous Chelsea Barracks in London.
It features hot new single Get On Your Boots, which is being played to death by radio stations across the UK.
Before hearing the killer tracks, the select guests had to give up all belongings – including mobile phones and any recording devices. They were only returned when the playthrough was over.
But it was worth it to get the first listen to amazing songs such as Magnificent, Moment Of Surrender and Cedars Of Lebanon.
On first hearing, it sounds like U2’s most complete album – to be listened to from first track to last. It’s also full of brilliant lyrics and Bono’s vocals have never sounded stronger.
Here is my pick of the key cuts on No Line On The Horizon.
NO LINE ON THE HORIZON
This opens with a loud sonic drone before Bono sings: “I knew a girl who’s like the sea/I watch her changing every day for me.”
Then Larry’s drums kick in and the song lifts off. It could be their best live stadium opener since Zoo Station.
MAGNIFICENT
A future single choice which more than lives up to its bold title. The Edge’s driving guitar gives the song a New Year’s Day-style mood.
Bono is in great form when he sings: “I was born to sing for you/I didn’t have a choice but to lift you up.”
He’s dead right because, just two numbers in, the album already has a classic feel.
MOMENT OF SURRENDER
Bono reckons this is one of the best songs U2 have written – and with their back catalogue, that’s saying something.
It opens with a guitar sound reminiscent of Where The Streets Have No Name and features a great Edge solo.
In one of his most personal lyrics, Bono says: “I’ve been in every black hole/At the altar of the dark star/My body’s now a begging bowl/That’s begging to get back.”
Astunning song Springsteen or Dylan would be proud of.
UNKNOWN CALLER
An epic with double-tracked vocals, wailing Edge guitar and pounding Adam bass.
It’s a musical feast with so much going on it’s initially tough to take it all in. In the chant-style chorus Bono sings: “Hear me/Cease to speak/That I may speak/Shush now.”
If nothing else, that’s got to be another first for U2 – a pop song with “Shush” in the lyric.
I’LL GO CRAZY IF I DON’T GO CRAZY TONIGHT
Thumping drums, pulsing bass and piano get this potential single off the launch pad.
Musically, it has all the trademarks of a U2 classic with another soaring Bono vocal and great “woo-oo” hook on the chorus.
STAND UP COMEDY
This proves the group are huge Led Zeppelin fans because Edge’s guitar riff has a real Jimmy Page feel.
In terms of being musically adventurous, it’s not for the faint-hearted and definitely up there with Exit from The Joshua Tree in 1987.
CEDARS OF LEBANON
Bono almost speaks his vocal over a more hymnal, hypnotic backing which leads to a beautiful, almost choral, hook.
Some atmospheric Edge guitar creeps in and builds the mood. This song is so good you don’t want it to end.
A fitting finale to a classic U2 album.
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Live News, February 02, 2009
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U2 are back.
Four years after their last album, How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, the Irish supergroup return with No Line On The Horizon, which will be released on February 28.
Musically, they’re back with their most experimental, exciting work in a decade.
The first single, Get On Your Boots, had a mixed reception when it was released last month. But now the first reviews of the album have started to trickle in from around the world, and they’re glowing.
The News of the World called No Line On The Horizon a cracking return to form, while The Glasgow Sunday Mail said it was U2’s most complete album, ranking it with their classics Achtung Baby and The Joshua Tree.
On Monday, media in Sydney gathered to hear all 11 songs on No Line on the Horizon, after surrendering mobile phones and recording devices.
The album opens with the title track, a raw groove that echoes The Edge’s guitar playing on The Fly.
Magnificent lives up to its name, and is sure to be an instant U2 anthem, as Bono sings: “I was born to sing for you, I didn’t have a choice.”
The singer calls Moment Of Surrender the best song the band has ever written, and at seven minutes long it’s an epic.Â
It’s also one of a number of songs in which The Edge’s guitar playing shines.
On Stand Up Comedy, U2 get their swagger on with some big Led Zepplin-esque riffs, and there’s a little Middle Eastern flavour on a couple of the tracks.
The band’s longtime producing team of Brian Eno and Danny Lanois are back on board and Eno’s influence can be heard particularly on FEZ – Being Born.
It’s their most adventurous moment, and it’s impossible to get its measure on one listen.
U2 strip it back on the striking White As Snow, while Cedars Of Lebanon is a reflective closer told from the perspective of a war correspondent.
The same old U2 themes of love, forgiveness, joy and beauty are evident on their 12th studio record, but the sentiments are less obvious and cheesy than they have been on recent albums.
The band hasn’t delivered a straight forward rock album, but the boys haven’t forgotten what they’re good at.
(c) Live News, 2009
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Sydney Morning Herald, February 02, 2009
Bernard Zuel
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I’ve had one listen to the new U2 album No Line On The Horizon.
It sounds adventurous and there are bits of very old U2 and bits of not so old U2, in league with sounds more common in Brooklyn at the moment than Dublin.
You can easily hear the influence of producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Definitely an improvement on How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. Here is a hurried first response and don’t hold me to the lyrical references.
Track one: No Line On The Horizon
Buzzy guitars and offkilter Enoesque noises vie for attention while Bono strains for effect as he reflects both the tension and the intensity of the song. The chorus (not a big one; more a devolving of the verse) retains the tension but puts it in a gentler setting. Bono seems to be singing to, or about, a girl, not for the last time on the album, but it’s not easy to decipher.
Track two: Magnificent
More of those odd sounds behind treated guitars and synthesisers and the song opens in two or would now be called “classic U2”, the familiar 80s quick marching rhythm and the Edge’s exploratory guitar lines. The most traditional sounding song on the album has Bono declaring that “I was born to sing for you/I didn’t have a choice” before confessing that “only love can leave such a mark”.
Track three: Moment Of Surrender
A moodier track with irregular hand percussion (or a loop, or both) picking away at the edges of a bed of synthesisers and violin. The emotional tone is late ’80s U2; the musical palette, with hints of electronica, is more early ’90s. Before those richly layered Eno/Lanois-signature backing vocals arrived late in the piece Bono goes from enigmatic: “I tied myself with wire to let the horses run free/playing with fire till the fire plays with me” (I think) to matters closer to the heart: “it’s not if I believe in love but if love believes in me”.
Track four: Unknown Caller
Some really interesting ambient sounds in a late, late night setting more concerned with atmosphere than asserting itself. It’s 3.33am “in a place of no consequence or company” and he’s “speed dialling with no signal at all”. The lyrics seem more impressionistic, disconnected and with a touch of David Bowie in the chanting underneath. And is that French horns at the end? Not usually heard on a U2 album.
Track five: I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight
Mixed marriages don’t always work, but should, seems to be the theme. “She’s a rainbow and she likes the quite life/I’ll go crazy if I don’t go crazy tonight.” This is a straight out pop song with reverb guitars and Bono in high croon. It’s also a U2 track they could do in their sleep, but no less attractive for that. The question is will it last as long as some of the others?
Track six: Get On Your Boots
The first single and perplexing some already. A mess of dirty guitars and urgent energy play through electronic bibs and bobs. You can hear Fly-era U2, with a little less edge, but here something niggling through earlier songs becomes clearer: they have been listening to Brooklyn’s art rockers TV On For Radio. It makes some sense: TV On The Radio spent their youth listening to Eno and Bowie too.
Track seven: Stand Up Comedy
A strutting 70s guitar finds the Edge channelling his inner Marc Bolan while that Brooklyn fractured dance of rock feels returns (and then becomes almost pure Madchester ecstasy nightclub). The “song” runs out a little earlier than the groove does but it doesn’t seem fatal at all.
Track eight: FEZ – Being Born
This seems to be two songs hooked together, one a collection of odd sounds and shapes, the other a pulsing rock number which becomes something else again when the sonic oddness returns prior to a drifting away ending.
Track nine: White As Snow
A ballad not just inspired by but evoking wide spaces and open skies. There are low rumbles and darting sounds, brass even. Could this be U2 aiming for Bruce Springsteen in his solo tales-of-the-desert mode?
Track 10: Breathe
This is pushier at immediately, coming with a bit of attitude. Did Bono really just say he is “not somebody’s cockatoo”? He definitely says “I’m running down the road like loose electricity while the band in my head plays a striptease” and it’s an apt description of this land of atmosphere and aggression.
Track 11: Cedars Of Lebanon
Lyrically and musically strongly reminiscent of a film noir narration (Bono as Walter Neff? Why not?), the central character is a man cut off from affection and life in general. Some really interesting harmonies – Eno at work again – and a closing set of lines worth pondering for implications. “Choose your enemies well for they will define you … they are going to last with you longer than your friends”.
(c) Sydney Morning Herald, 2009.
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3 users responded in this post
ci sono anche le buzzy guitars e riffes alla LedZep eh eh eh,ci sara’ da divertirsi un mondo……..SCUSATE SE MI RIPETO,ma lo sapevo e queste cose non le dico io ma fonti autorevolissime da Inghilterra ed Australia,mica cotica.-)
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l’unico problema di queste reviews è che fanno crescere la già calda temperatura d’attesa…
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gia’……..e non dico altro!
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