LUCIDMEDIA

U2 Plays With Infinity

Written by Catherine Kustanczy Friday, 27 March 2009 15:58

Before there was internet or iTunes, a strange, unique album was released. It contained odd (and oddly-titled) tracks like “One Minute Warning” and “Ito Okashi”, and contained the kind of material that normally relegates such projects to the outer reaches of the record store, somewhere between “ambient” and “free association.” Strange to think one of the biggest bands on the planet was behind it. The Passengers, composed of U2 (Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr.) along with producer Brian Eno and various collaborators, yielded one well-known single (“Miss Sarajevo” with Luciano Pavarotti) and a near-universal groan of disdain.

Yet, to quote The Passengers’ tune, “Slug” U2 “don’t want to stay the same.” Their last two releases, All That You Can’t Leave Behind and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, embraced the easily-digested, broad stadium-pounding sound for which they are renowned, but neither seemed creatively satisfying for a band who once took delight in “chopping down the Joshua Tree.” And so the beginning of March saw the Irish foursome release No Line On The Horizon to mixed critical response. Along with the release came a flurry of publicity, and tour dates have steadily, dependably, been selling out.

Their twelfth studio album, produced by longtime collaborators Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno along with Steve Lillywhite, is, however, not easy-breezy wallpaper music; you can’t listen to it while you’re doing something –anything –else. Time’s at a premium in our modern world, and yet U2’s work demands it –along with attention, and patience, not qualities normally associated with either a band of U2’s stature, or with the modern consumption practices around music. The punchy first single, “Get On Your Boots,” has polarized not only U2’s fanbase, but modern music lovers in general. The song itself has touches of North Africa, with its Sufi-meets-Alice In Chains refrain of lusty earnestness (“You don’t know how beautiful you are”) and slips in a neat mix of Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up” with the electronic roughness of Massive Attack near the end as Bono wails “Let me in the sound!” –a creative, daring section that firmly places them back on experimental terrain.

No Line On The Horizon’s title track can trace its roots directly back to the bombast of Achtung Baby, with echoes of “The Fly” and “Zoo Station” in guitar & rhythm. It’s a huge, soaring, expansive, all-encompassing sound, held together by The Edge’s trademark quilt of loud guitar sounds and the solid, searing rhythm section of Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton. For all of its noisy bombast, the song has a meditative, driving quality that forces more rumination than elevation, more stillness than vertigo.

The tune’s Zen-like lyrics match the Sugimoto cover art, but blend equally well with Bono’s marked tendency of marrying sacred and sexy. In 1991, he crooned, over a hypnotic beat filled with fuzzy guitars and trip-hop scratches, “She wears my love like a see-through dress / her lips say one thing / her movements, something else…” That elusive quality –of spiritual, of sexual, of holy and profane, and that collision informing the artistic impulse –is again very much in evidence on No Line On The Horizon, with the singer proclaiming,

I know a girl with a hole in her heart
She said infinity’s a great place to start
“Time is irrelevant, it’s not linear”
Then she put her tongue in my ear

This is proper, real, lived-in adult rock –not treacly-sweet or preening, and not meant for fast consumption, but to be savoured slowly and carefully, given the mental roll-around and think-over, with a generous dollop sensual earthiness for balance.

Magnificent, the second track and the forthcoming second single, explores these notions of grace and divinity with a chorus that is maddeningly simple and catchy. Its fuzzy guitar intro recalls the “Black Betty” riff, before going off on the mid-tempo, soaring, expansive sound the band is known for. The nasty opening riffs conjure up a Zeppelin-meets-Sabbath hybrid, with touches of new heavies The Bronx. “Moment of Surrender” finds Bono conjuring his inner soul-man, and in the process, delivering one of the best vocal performances of his career. Daniel Lanois’ tuneful touch can be easily discerned, as well as the smooth, sure underpinnings of Brain Eno. A slow, meditative, seven-minute masterpiece, the lyrics take the tack of a strung-out junkie scratching at transcendence amidst the detritus of the habitual and predictable. The piece builds to a gorgeous crescendo of fat, echoing guitars, loping bass, looping beats, carnivalesque organs, and a chorus of voices in harmony. Damnation never sounded so heavenly.