When U2 testified "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" in 1987, they weren't really presenting a problem, persay. It could be said that they put forth a manifesto that has carried them for almost thirty years. That same restless spirit has carried them around the world and pushes them ever-forward in a journey that has no end in sight.
"No Line On The Horizon" seems to speak directly to the spiritual longing that has defined U2 as human beings and musicians. If the roads U2 have traveled through this life have led them to any understanding, its that the journey never ends. It restarts as life goes on and new destinations are chosen. For U2, the only real currency in life is some level of self-awareness.
There are no answers, only better questions.
In the end, you are only becoming.
U2 seems to revel in this understanding. The band might understand the way of the world, but that hasn't dampened their desire to change it for the better. "No Line On The Horizon" is an album filled with hope and a healthy resolve. Bono and company have embraced their past and carried it forward. This time around, they have made peace with their roles as pilgrims on an unending spiritual-quest. Their reward, it seems, is that they have been able to make this journey together.
As a swell of distortion rises, "No Line On The Horizon"(the album's first track) finds the band attempting to leave a crater on the earth. The band pounds vengefully on the song with flaring nostrils only pausing to whisper the mantra, "No line on the horizon...no, no line." As the song comes to a close, Bono shouts out, "Every night I have the same dream, I’m hatching some plot, scheming some scheme" with such conviction and force that you have no choice but to take him at his word. It's clear that age and success have done nothing to dull the band's sense of purpose. They are still flying out of the starting blocks with their eyes focused forward.
Bono is a master at singing about the act of singing. "I was born to sing for you, I didn't have a choice but to lift you up," he declares in "Maginificent". As the band rolls behind him, Bono restates what he now believes is his life's purpose - to raise you up with his songs. It's as if, in middle age, he has come to terms with his mission and accepts it as good fortune.
The band is hell-bent on exploring different textures and wrapping its songs in the same tenacious melodic grip it conjured on "Achtung Baby". The most glaring of these examples is "Get On Your Boots". As the band explodes through the song, it leaves enough room to break it all down as Bono demands, "Let me in the sound!...Meet me in the sound!" He also celebrates the sheer power of his own voice in the staggering Dylanesque romp of "Breathe". "I'm running down the road like loose electricity, while the band in my head plays a striptease."
Thematically, the bands wants to move its own cursor forward. But, it does so in measured blasts. There is no "atomic" moment that serves as the summation of the album's intentions. Instead, the songs deliberately move forward with fat guitar distortion murmuring beneath the songs and drumming so sharp it sounds vaguely inhuman. There are splashes of piano and the caress-of-steel dash of synthesizers. There are moments where the band is self-referential to the point of referencing sounds heard on this album. The dizzying vocals at the beginning of "Fez-Being Born" seem to foreshadow the line "Head first, then foot...the heart sets sail", as Bono lets loose with the kind of feral wail that calls to mind the singer we first heard on "Boy". The song is a perfect example of how U2 is determined to look back and borrow from its own sonic palette as it forges ahead.
As "Cedars Of Lebanon" rounds out the album, the loose observances of a reporter ("Spent the night trying to make a deadline. Squeezing complicated lives into a simple headline") who is learning to live in a war-zone are interrupted by a lifeless plea to "return the call to home". The Edge, Larry Mullen, Jr. and Adam Clayton play their roles dutifully, providing the limpid, march-like soundscape that lead Bono's voice like a compass in a sandstorm. The song is a marvel of minimalism as Bono surveys the wreckage before declaring, "Choose your enemies carefully ‘cos they will define you. Make them interesting ‘cos in some ways they will mind you. They’re not there in the beginning but when your story ends. Gonna last with you longer than your friends."
This wisdom comes from a man who clearly has nothing to worry about it when it comes to his friends. They are also the words of a man who blurs the line between friend and foe, if it means doing something that might be good for others (see his uneasy friendship with George W. Bush for the sake of relieving Third World debt). It's clear that U2 have faced the world and conquered it, again and again. Contrary to that song, Bono may have made enemies, but his friendships will outlast them. The members of U2 have chosen each other to go through time with...and they have chosen wisely.
As "No Line On The Horizon" reminds us, their journey is on-going and we are better because they are willing to set sail, yet again.
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