No Songs Like That

I've never written a record review. I have spoken approximately 2,587 record reviews, and that's just if we count what I said to my former colleague in Japan, Mike, the only person I know who can tell you all about Kind of Blue and Astral Weeks but still has the time and inclination to get into Slayer in his mid 30s.

You may have heard that a new U2 album was released this week, the group's 12th. As with most music snobs of my generation if they are being honest, U2 was the first band I obsessed over, listening to Boy through The Joshua Tree and virtually nothing else for most of 1987. That being said, I am by no means a U2 fanboy. I found the 90s albums intolerable and can now go literally years without listening to the 1980s high water mark of inspirational-wet-dream-pretension that was the Unforgettable Fire (it's last spin on the ipod was on a bike ride in Japan in October 2007, and while, yes, it may be a bit over the top, it is still a great record).

2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind was the return of that classic U2 sound - Adam Clayton thumped the same bass line he'd been thumping since War, the Edge jingled and jangled and kept the batteries in that delay pedal fresh, Larry Mullen tapped out military patterns on his snare while Bono sang songs with names like When I Look at the World and Peace on Earth. I loved it. And I even liked the much criticized 2004 follow up, the unfortunately named How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (certainly in the top 5 "badly titled good records," somewhere among R.E.M.'s New Adventures in Hi Fi and Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow). That record even has a song called Yahweh, for Christ's sake. No wonder so many people (my friend Mike notable among them) wish upon a star for Bono to meet up with a flesh eating virus that attacks his vocal chords but leaves the rest of him to writhe in unrelenting agony.

So what's the deal with No Line on the Horizon? The haters will hate it. The level of animosity - no, that's not quite right. Allow me to start again. The vitriolic malice, spite, and revulsion the anti-Bono crowd has for his pretension, rock star hypocrisy, and politician's smirk will only be amped after they get a whiff of lines like "every generation gets a chance to change the world," and "the shitty world sometimes produces a rose" (I swear a grown man who writes songs profesionally actually sang that line on this album) on song titles such as Cedars of Lebanon. I can hear Mike now. "Dude. They have got to be joking. Cedars of fucking Lebanon! Have they no shame!" And I would put my head down in shame as Mike would fantasize about all the cool ways in which Bono and/or the rest of the band could be dismembered, buried alive, or at least water boarded.

And for those of us who grew up on U2? You're gonna buy it anyway, but here are my two cents. The Edge is starting to plagiarize himself - the Walk On riff seems to come up again and again (but then again Clayton has been playing that bass line for 25 years and no one complains). The first signs of wear and tear are apparent in Bono's voice (check out the squeaks in the upper registers that he just can't quite hit full tilt in I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight). The much maligned Get on Your Boots is not nearly as bad as it's been made out by some and seems to work well as a lead single, as if that even matter anymore in this age of download-whatever-song-you-want.

The biggest revelation to me, and I admit I may very well be making a mountain out of a mole hill here, is that Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois have come away with songwriting credits on 7 of the 11 songs here. Think about that for a second. Imagine Bob Dylan sharing credit with Lanois on Oh Mercy or Time Out of Mind. Yes, the layered sound that is Eno's hallmark is all over this album, not that it is necessarily a good thing (and Lanois's triple serving of reverb is all over Time Out of Mind - sure as hell doesn't mean that his Bobness needed a writing partner). How to Dismantle a Band By Coming Up with a Stupid Ass Title for a Good Record was a good record for those 3 minute bursts of postpunk guitar rock (All Because of You, Vertigo) that hadn't seen the light of day on a U2 record since Electric Co off Boy.

And that is the biggest weakness of No Line on the Horizon. For all their faults (and even I'll admit they have many), U2 does stadium rock like no one else. They can actually ROCK. The Edge can make the hair stand up on the back of the neck of that dork in the cardigan sweater in the back row of the upper prom of a Japanese all purpose convention hall with that jingle jangle thing he does. But on this album, it just doesn't work. Yes, Clayton gives us that bass line and Bono sings high pitched hoo-hoo's and the Edge plays with lots of effects pedals and Mullen sounds like he's playing halftime at the Army-Navy game. On the best U2 records, the four members of the band do these things they do, and it results in unmatchable if not overblown epics like Bad, Where the Streets Have No Name, and City of Blinding Lights or at least rockers like A Day Without Me and Desire. No Line on the Horizon has No Songs Like That.

Methinks I should stick with speaking my record reviews. That was hard.