On this day in 2009: U2 released 'Magnificient'

It’s a testament to the band’s staying power that a U2 album is still a global news event – as opposed to, say, a Rolling Stones record, which everybody knows is just an excuse to go out on another Greatest Hits tour.

As Bono told Hot Press a couple of years ago, it’s the young guns like Franz Ferdinand and The Killers (not to mention Kings Of Leon and Fleet Foxes) that they’re competing with, rather than dadrockers whose best work is a good 20 or 30 years behind them. Which isn’t to suggest that they’ve fallen into the trap of being middle-aged family men trying – and failing horribly – to sound like they’re down with the kids. Far from it.

No Line On The Horizon is a mature, tender, reflective record of great musical variety, depth and beauty that could only have been made by four people who’ve experienced just about everything that life can throw at you.

Anyone judging the album by ‘Get On Your Boots’, a big funky beast of a song, with Bono hitting notes that a 48-year-old has no right to, will have forgotten how U2 like to tease with their lead singles. The collection’s only other ball-busting, out and out rocker is the title-track, which lives up to the “Buzzcocks meets Bow Wow Wow” billing it’s been given by its author, who mixes metaphysics with mischief-making as he recounts: “She said, ‘Time is irrelevant, it’s not linear’/Then she put her tongue in my ear.”

If that line’s playfully throwaway, on the rest of No Line On The Horizon Bono is as lyrically dexterous as he’s ever been.

“From the womb my first cry, it was a joyful noise… only love, only love can leave such a mark,” he proclaims on the aptly-titled ‘Magnificent’, an eclectic mix – inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Magnificat, no less – of mournful Roy Orbison guitar, Killers-style synth stabs (this musical magpie lark works both ways, Brandon!) and anthemic flourishes which recall the likes of ‘New Year’s Day’ and ‘Pride’.

You’re still digesting all of that when up pops ‘Moment Of Surrender’, a gospel-flavoured seven-minute epic that rides in on an orchestral wave, and includes such evocative cinematic couplets as: “I was speeding on the subway/Through the stations of the cross/Every eye looking every other way/Counting down ‘til the pain would stop.” If U2 were trying to conjure the same spiritual vibe as Marvin Gaye’s ‘Abraham, Martin, John’ they’ve succeeded. ‘Moment Of Surrender’ is a big, sweeping track in the vein of ‘With Or Without You’ that’s certain to become a U2 classic.

The first reminder that Fez, in Morocco, was the birthplace for much of the album – and that Brian Eno was among the midwives – is provided by the birdsong and looped Arab percussion at the beginning of ‘Unknown Caller’, which also finds Bono giving his falsetto another impressive work out.

Things get even more experimental on ‘Fez – Being Born’, a wonderfully intriguing song of two halves that starts with disembodied voices, FM static and other ambient weirdness before giving way to Edge’s trademark chiming guitar. Unconventional, but it works.

Listeners looking for autobiographical insight, meanwhile, should proceed immediately to the Will.i.am and string section-assisted ‘I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight’, a real grower which features such revelatory lines as “There’s a part of me in the chaos that’s quiet/And there’s a part of you that wants me to riot.”

You also get the strong suspicion that Bono’s talking about himself on ‘Stand Up Comedy’, another dirty white funk workout on which he declares: “I can stand up for hope, faith, love/Josephine, be careful of small men with big ideas/Stand up to rock stars, Napoleon is in high heels.” Find me a Chris Martin line that self-deprecating and I’ll buy you a pint.

U2 revisit Rattle And Hum’s ‘Van Dieman’s Land’ with the sparse ‘White As Snow’, a track written for Jim Sheridan’s Afghanistan war movie Brothers. Both lyrically and musically it strays into the same territory as Springsteen’s The Ghost Of Tom Joad, with an extra twist of Leonard Cohen for good measure.

Eno has decided that the penultimate track, ‘Breathe’, is “the best U2 song ever”. While that assessment is perhaps a little over the top, the Beatles-esque track is a genuine standout with Bono evoking the spirit of St. John Divine and unnamed ju-ju men, as a hyperactive cello and Larry’s tom-toms fight it out in the background.

If ever there was a song for the times, it’s the closing ‘Cedars Of Lebanon’, a beautiful half-spoken ballad in which Bono narrates from the point of view of a weary war correspondent – the thing is that you just know that there’s a lot of the U2 frontman in there too.

“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,” he pronounces, before the song does the musical equivalent of The Sopranos’ last scene and comes to an abrupt halt, ending the record on a suitably low key and yet indisputably high note.

32 years in, and the buggers are still worth every column inch that No Line On The Horizon’s going to garner them. To say that U2 fans will love it is a gross understatement. NLOTH is a very powerful record indeed.

Browse the extensive Hot Press U2 Collection here.