You Too?

Time Out New York magazine is not exactly considered the "go to" source for music reviews. However in the latest issue, the one with the naked people on the cover, their reviewer has joined the bandwagon of U2 haters based on their latest less than stellar effort entitled 'No Line on the Horizon'. It certainly looks like the masses are working to bring down perhaps the biggest band of the last decade (maybe two decades). Is it warranted?

Here is their (IMHO, very good) review:

U2 is at a rather strange point in its evolution, a bit like a woman who was really, really sexy in her twenties but has now reached her forties—and has a choice. Either carry on wearing the same makeup, thigh boots and whatever—or embrace a new way of being. It could be equally sexy, but it will be different. And that’s the risk.

To judge by No Line on the Horizon, U2’s 12th album, the band is torn between those routes (Ivana Trump and Julianne Moore, perhaps?). No question this was once a genuinely fiery, inspiring band; just cock an ear to the teary polemics of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” or the ludicrous, dazzling romance of “With or Without You” if you need reminding. But the things that stoke our brains and hearts change over the years; consequently, the least convincing tracks here are the ones that mine that same old territory—the yet-another-Batman-theme-song grind of “Get on Your Boots,” for example, or the ploddy “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight.”

No Line on the Horizon is at its most intriguing and beguiling on those understated, stranger tracks where the music is jointly credited to U2 and producers Brian Eno and Danny Lanois: the longing sweetness of “Magnificent,” which recalls Talk Talk, or the gently soaring “Moment of Surrender.” Overall, you can’t help but feel that when U2 stops trying to deliver what it thinks people love it for, the band may be a really sexy proposition again.

Taken without permission from the writer, Sophie Harris