No Line on the Horizon?

I know I'm not usually the first horse out of the gate, so I'm just now catching up to music events of '09. If I'd heard about this release earlier, I mighta thought it had to do with an artistic landscape composition. Maybe it does? Check out portions of a review I copied on U2's No Line on the Horizon from Pitchfork Media. I cut out the vicious and detailed bits. Entertainment Weekly was more generous and I've included a portion of their comments below.

Anybody else listening to this music and have an opinion?

"Why U2? How did these four Irishmen become the blueprint for every band with stadium aspirations? The Edge's churchly guitar chime-- which thrives on the same arena acoustics that can turn otherwise booming bands into mud-- is certainly a factor. So is their weakness for the big gesture-- whether it be a giant lemon, heart, or mouth. And Bono's cathartic mix of modern panacea-- love, God, mass culture-- gives them a reach to the back row and beyond. But, perhaps above all else, the band's restlessness and willingness to challenge both themselves and their patrons is why the Killers, Kanye West, and Coldplay want to be the next U2 and not the next AC/DC. It's why these four Irishmen still represent the punk spirit decades after they emerged from it.

"You've got to balance being relevant and commenting on something that's happening today with trying to attain timelessness," philosophized the Edge in the early 1990s. The quote sounds like rock star bs...until you realize that's pretty much what U2 did for 20 years. From 1980 to 2000, it was difficult to tell exactly what the next U2 album would sound like. Briefly: They added atmosphere to new wave, looked for God and found hits, exhumed their rock'n'roll heroes, sent-up those same heroes while losing their religion, and punctured pop via mutated techno. Each move was more audacious than the last-- even 1997 knee-jerk victim Pop saw the world-beating act taking completely unnecessary musical and financial risks in the name of Warholian post-modern pastiche. They then also managed to surprise on 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind by successfully returning to form after shrugging off the notion for so many years. But 2004's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and its subsequent tour were troubling.

That record saw four guys famous for dabbing classic rock into all sorts of impressionistic frames (or dismantling it entirely via Village People costumes) uncomfortably grasping for old-fashioned riffs, when they weren't mindlessly feasting on their own past. It was completely predictable ("City of Blinding Lights"), canned ("Vertigo"), and depressingly Sting-like ("A Man and a Woman"). But the group did little to hide the fact that they were basking in their early-century comeback's afterglow; in concert, in place of the ATYCLB tour's heart-shaped runway was a, um, circle-shaped runway. Still self-aware enough to sense stagnation, the quartet began to work on what would become No Line on the Horizon with new producer Rick Rubin and an imperative to break all those piling U2 trappings once again. As Bono told The New York Times this week: "When you become a comfortable, reliable friend, I'm not sure that's the place for rock'n'roll." — Ryan Dombal, March, 2009

EW's view- ''No, no line on the horizon,'' Bono sings on the title track, a raw and moody ode to the muse, where The Edge's rough riffing is soothed by ethereal synth. This is an adventurous experience created by responsible people, for responsible people — a record about searching for meaning, but always knowing the way home.

The album's risk/reward pays off early with a pair of six-minute-plus epics, both of which have Bono seeking and receiving something like divine revelation in the rattle and hum of the everyday world. ''Moment of Surrender'' — wherein a profound encounter with ''a vision of invisibility'' goes down at an ATM — is an organ-fueled hymn that takes its own soulful time coming to an end. It is immediately followed by ''Unknown Caller,'' a rousing if kinda goofy spiritual wake-up call aimed at a culture of blurry-eyed BlackBerry addicts. Computer jargon is turned into spiritual maxims issued by a voice-of-God shout-chant chorus: ''Shush now/Oh, oh/Force quit and move to trash.'' Now you know what didactic spam sounds like.