U2, 'No Line on the Horizon'

The buzz: Oh, it's only the first new album in four years from the universe's biggest band. So no big deal, really.

The verdict: After 12 albums and almost three decades, you'd think U2 would be sick of being great, and be content to just be good—after all, contemporaries of theirs (from Bruce Springsteen to Pearl Jam) often play to the whims of their cults rather than reach for their early-career mainstream heights. Not U2, and especially not this album: though far more experimental than 2004's “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb,” “Horizon” is stacked with songs that feel stadium-huge yet maintain an honest, shocking intimacy. One of the ways U2 do this is by referencing some of their biggest admirers: when Bono hits the falsetto in the epic, string-laden “I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight,” you can't help but think that's the way Chris Martin would attack the same song; when the whole band yells, “Go/Shout it out/Rise up!” (on “Unknown Caller”), it's clear that they never would have taken that tack pre-Arcade Fire. But what U2 do—what U2 have always done—is make those new influences their own, and by so doing, give new fire to younger bands, who'll no doubt force U2 to reach even further in the future.

Did you know? Bono's promised that their upcoming, in-the-round stadium tour will be the band's biggest production since their legendary 1992 Zoo TV outing.

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