No Line on the Horizon [Limited Digipak] [PA] [Digipak] [Limited]

Performer: U2
Artist: Harold Budd
Engineer: Declan Gaffney; Dave Emery; Florian Ammon; Richard Rainey; Tony Mangurian; Carl Glanville; Cenzo Townshend; Dave Clauss; Tom Hough; Declan Gaffney; Dave Emery; Cheryl Engels; Florian Ammon; Kevin Wilson; Richard Rainey; Steve Lillywhite; Tony Mangurian; Chris Heaney; C.J Eiriksson; Carl Glanville; Cenzo Townshend
Producer: Steve Lillywhite; Will.I.Am; Brian Eno; Danny Lanois; Steve Lillywhite; Brian Eno
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: Limited Edition with album CD, 36 page colour booklet and fold out poster. Features access to exclusive downloadable Anton Corbijn film. U2: The Edge (vocals, guitar, piano); Bono (vocals, guitar); Adam Clayton (bass guitar); Larry Mullen, Jr. (drums, percussion). Personnel: Danny Lanois (vocals, guitar); Brian Eno (vocals, synthesizer, programming, loops); Louis Watkins (soprano); Cathy Thompson (violin); Caroline Dale (cello); Richard Watkins (French horn); will.i.am (keyboards); Sam O'Sullivan (percussion); Tony Mangurian (programming). Additional personnel: Terry Lawless (piano, Fender Rhodes piano, keyboards). Audio Mixers: Declan Gaffney; Danny Lanois; Richard Rainey; Steve Lillywhite; CJ Eiriksson; Carl Glanville; Cenzo Townshend. Audio Remasterer: John Davis . Recording information: HQ, Riad El Yacout, Fez; Olympic Studios, London, England; Platinum Sound Recording Studios, NY. Photographer: Anton Corbijn. Arrangers: U2; Brian Eno. There's no shortage of legendary producers in line to work with music world titans U2; when work with Rick Rubin broke off, Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois stepped in. The resulting NO LINE ON THE HORIZON, 2009's offering from the Irish rockers, continues in the grand U2 tradition, as soaring pop anthems like opening single "Get on Your Boots" pair with experimental melanges like "Tripoli," on a striking album featuring touches of all the albums come before, yet hinting at new worlds for Bono to conquer. After spending the 1990s experimenting with electronic music and returning to arena-ready rock during the first few years of the 21st century, U2 stakes out territory somewhere between those two points on 2009's NO LINE ON THE HORIZON. Enlisting its go-to production trio of Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, and Steve Lillywhite, the Irish quartet seems intent on crafting a quirkier companion piece to HOW TO DISMANTLE AN ATOMIC BOMB, and they succeed with restless tracks such as "Get on Your Boots," which sounds like "Vertigo" hijacked by T. Rex, and "Stand Up Comedy," a wiry number that lets the Edge cut loose with barbed guitar lines. Some of most striking songs on HORIZON are the ones that venture farthest from U2's comfort zone, as on the surprisingly weighty title track, a tune that counterbalances its nearly industrial heft with a high-pitched keyboard melody, and, of course, Bono's soaring vocals. Although HORIZON is willfully less accessible than BOMB or ALL THAT YOU CAN'T LEAVE BEHIND, it's no return to ZOOROPA-level obtuseness either, meaning that U2 fans will find plenty to admire here even if it doesn't hit them with the immediacy of the group's signature anthems. 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. These songs resonate deeper and longer than anything on Atomic Bomb, their grandeur almost seeming effortless. It's the rest of the record that illustrates how difficult it is to sound so magnificent. With the exception of that strained middle triptych, the rest of the album is in the vein of "No Line on the Horizon", "Magnificent" and "Breathe," only quieter and unfocused, with its ideas drifting instead of gelling. Too often, the album whispers in a murmur so quiet it's quite easy to ignore -- "White as Snow," an adaptation of a traditional folk tune, and "Cedars of Lebanon," its verses not much more than a recitation, simmer so slowly they seem to evaporate -- but at least these poorly defined subtleties sustain the hazily melancholy mood of No Line on the Horizon. When U2, Eno, and Lanois push too hard -- the ill-begotten techno-speak overload of "Unknown Caller," the sound sculpture of "Fez-Being Born" -- the ideas collapse like a pyramid of cards, the confusion amplifying the aimless stretches of the album, turning it into a murky muddle. Upon first listen, No Line on the Horizon seems as if it would be a classic grower, an album that makes sense with repeated spins, but that repetition only makes the album more elusive, revealing not that U2 went into the studio with a dense, complicated blueprint, but rather, they had no plan at all. [The CD was also released in a limited digipack.] ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Rolling Stone (p.72) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "The Edge takes one of his few extended guitar solos at the end of 'Unknown Caller,' a straightforward, elegiac break with a worn, notched edge to his treble tone....'Cedars of Lebanon' ends the album much as 'The Wanderer' did on ZOOROPA, a triumph of bare minimums..." Spin (p.73) - "U2 still inspire flashes of elation, awe, and yes, hope like no other rock band....The title-track opener masses the Edge's guitar and synth tracks into a dense whir and swirl amid gurning polyrhythms..." Entertainment Weekly (pp.70-71) - "NO LINE ON THE HORIZOON is an eclectic and electrifying winner, one that speaks to the zeitgeist the way only U2 can and dare do....The record's instant classic is its penultimate track, 'Breathe,' a stomping, snarling rumination..." -- Grade: A- Down Beat (p.58) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Purveyors of anthemic rock at its finest, arguably the world's greatest pop band offers more passion under the guidance of producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois..." Q (Magazine) (pp.94-95) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "The first part of NO LINE ON THE HORIZON contains the U2 of wide-open spaces, of sweeping mountain valleys, and of Edge's signature chiming guitar lines....The best U2 album since ACHTUNG BABY. With time, it may prove to be better still." Mojo (Publisher) (p.96) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "The result is a collage of several kinds of classic U2 albums, one that has the beauty of their panoramic '80s Eno/Lanois recordings plus the synthetic experimentation and dalliance with pop merriment which revolutionized the band's modus operandi from ACHTUNG BABY onwards." Blender (Magazine) (p.58) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "'Moment of Surrender' is the high point -- seven minutes of Bono in gospel mode, lost in the late-night city, questing for salvation and finding it in Adam Clayton's bass. The Edge fleshes out the yearning with some piercing crazy-diamond guitar." Clash (magazine) (p.106) - "Drenched in The Edge's sky-scraping guitar solos, Bono's operatic vocals, and Eno and Lanois' ambient, textured production effects....A record that is trademark U2 -- playful, soulful, stadium-slaying and decidedly heavy at times." Record Collector (magazine) (p.102) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Smart one-liners pepper the album....Musically eclectic at every turn, the title track is swathed in the staccato guitar figures Franz Ferdinand have recently monopolised..."

U2's Bono was one of the few real rock heroes of the 1980s, leading the Irish band to international recognition with a charged, political approach to music. The band's early efforts brought a stadium-size presence to post-punk, with Bono's expressive vocals and the Edge's distinct guitar lines interacting seamlessly with the rhythm section of bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. In 1987, U2 broke through to superstardom with THE JOSHUA TREE, a grand culmination of their '80s sound. In the 1990s, however, the band very purposefully deflated that epic image, simultaneously adding ambient, dance, and electronica touches on 1991's ACHTUNG BABY. Mining that vein for much of the decade, U2 kicked off the 21st century with a triumphant return to form that was embraced by new and longtime fans alike.

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