Every time U2 releases a new album, the rumors begin of it being another "throw-back" Joshua Tree. Fortunately, No Line of the Horizon continues the tradition of squashing such rumors.  Sure, don't get me wrong, The Joshua Tree was one of the more redeeming aspects of 80's music scene, but who wants to follow a band that continually remakes the same album?  Here is where U2 earns their bigger-than-their-own-ego status.  Whether it is the distorted sounds of Achtung Baby!, the experimental project of Passengers, or the identity crisis of Pop, U2 has continually pushed their own creative bounds.    No Line for the Horizon is no different.   With their unique play on post-Irish punk, songs such as Magnificent, Unknown Caller, and Breathe only suggest that U2's progressive nature has yet to reach its conclusion.

What happened to the pissed-off punksters from Dublin who were writing songs with titles like "I Threw a Brick Through a Window," "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "Bullet in a Blue Sky"? U2's latest album seems to carry with it a sense of (rocking) freedom. The rage of the past seems to have been spit out and burned up and with it has come lines like:

"Every day I have to find the courage to walk out into the street with arms out. Got a love you can't defeat. Neither down or out, there's nothing you have that I need, I can breathe. Breathe now." 

Bono admits the fear and defeat of the world exists, but screams that it doesn't have anything that he needs, now he can breathe.

Bono used to be the subject. "I still haven't found what I'm looking for." But for the track "Moment of surrender" from U2's newly released album, No Line on the Horizon, Bono flips that around, singing "It's not if I believe in love, if love believes in me." Before the "I" was the subject, but now "love" is the subject (here's a link if you need to brush on your grammar). The rest of the song seems to be getting at some watershed moment in the life of the speaker (I'm not sure how autobiographical this is, though most of Bono's song lean heavily that way), though what that exact moment is or how it comes about isn't exactly clear. But this much seems to be clear, Bono (who maybe speaking for the rest of the band as well) seems to have given up control, apparently to something represented by, or like, "love."

If you watched the Oscars this past Sunday you were nailed over and over with ads that brought social justice issues to the table. It seems that these days every company and their sister corporations are doing so much to fix our broken world. If I didn't know better it would seem that laissez-faire capitalism has returned to its rightful place in American society as the corrective force that we should all feel foolish for thinking critically of. But to be honest the ad companies know their target audience, because I was fairly moved by the good Coke and Truenorth ads. (True confession: I don't even know what Truenorth does or what the company is, but I liked them from watching their ads that in no way describe anything about the company's purpose... but here's what I found when I googled it.)