U2 - No Line On The Horizon (Remastered) (Vinyl) (2019) [24/96]

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 2004's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. After recording two new cuts with Rick Rubin for the '06 compilation U218 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.

Track List:
01. No Line On The Horizon (4:11)
02. Magnificent (5:22)
03. Moment Of Surrender (7:24)
04. Unknown Caller (6:04)
05. I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight (4:14)
06. Get On Your Boots (3:26)
07. Stand Up Comedy (3:48)
08. FEZ – Being Born (5:14)
09. White As Snow (4:40)
10. Breathe (4:59)
11. Cedars Of Lebanon (4:13)
12. Magnificent (Wonderland Remix) (9:51)
13. I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight (Redanka's 'Kick Darkness' Vocal Version) (7:29)