Anticipating U2’s No Line on the Horizon

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Artwork for the cover is by Japanese artist and photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto

As a U2 fan, I am looking forward to the release of U2’s new album, No Line on the Horizon. While the album is slated for release in North American on 3 March 2009, the first single from the album, “Get on your boots,” has been available since mid-January. I’m not sure what I think about “Get on your boots.” I like it, though I don’t think it will be one of my U2 favourties. The song is a fun romp with Bono taking a break from his political activism (“I don’t want to talk about wars between nations”) and calling us to live in the joy of the moment together (“”here’s where we gotta be / love and community / laughter is eternity /if joy is real”).

The official (and somewhat surreal) music video for “Get On Your Boots” can be viewed on YouTube:

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The first full review of the album was just published over at Neil McCormick’s Telegraph.co.uk blog. McCormick comes right out and give us his assessment:

It is a great record, and greatness is what rock and roll and the world needs right now. From the grittily urgent yet ethereal title track all the way to the philosophically ruminative, spacey coda of ‘Cedars Of Lebanon’ it conjures an extraordinary journey through sound and ideas, a search for soul in a brutal, confusing world, all bound together in narcotic melody and space age pop songs.

What I found most interesting about McCormick’s review is his statement that “To me, it is probably the album ‘Zooropa’ was supposed to be, building on the sonic architecture of classic U2 and taking it into the pop stratosphere.” It seems like what we’re going to be treated to is another example of U2 departing from the easy route and giving us something that is a bit experimental yet retaining enough of the core sound that everyone expects from U2. As someone who loves pretty much all of U2’s albums, including the more experimental albums Zooropa and Pop, I know what I’ll be buying the morning of March 3rd!

I encourage you to read McCormick’s full review (btw, McCormick is a childhood friend of Bono and U2 and author of Killing Bono: I Was Bono’s Doppelganger [Buy from Amazon.ca | Amazon.com] and contributor to U2 By U2 [Buy from Amazon.ca | Amazon.com]).

The album, No Line on the Horizon, is being released in a number of different packages: