U2, No Line on the Horizon

I know Bono was shooting for "future hymns" but this album sounds an awful lot like previous ones, with some interpolated actual hymns ("White As Snow") thrown in for good measure. There isn't the wildness of Achtung Baby, the experiments of Pop and Zooropa or the punch of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb; what persists is a throwback feel with that same level of lyrical complexity but a hollower style that varies widely from refreshingly ethereal to vaguely claustrophobic. I like the more contemplative pieces ("Moment of Surrender" and "FEZ-Being Born") but some are just hackneyed ("Unknown Caller" with out-of-place references to passwords and the Macintosh Finder), and "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" has their classic verve but still sounds more like a soundcheck than a studio. (Strangely, it's those Steve Lillywhite-produced tracks that are the weakest artistically; you can really tell who had the reins when.) Fortunately they can intermittently find their edge with solid, harder-hitting tracks like the title and the off-kilter Middle Eastern shifts of "Get On Your Boots," and in the end it's still a good album, but it nevertheless comes off as slightly beneath their talent. The iTunes bonus tracks aren't anything to write home about either; the Crookers remix of "Get On Your Boots" in particular merely makes a pleasingly daffy track daft. (Content: S-bomb on "Cedars of Lebanon.")

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U2, Achtung Baby

If the cultural zeitgeist of the early 1990s could be etched into a disc, it would end up sounding a lot like this one. No coincidence, then, that it was recorded in Berlin and Dublin where their worldly tumults just ooze into the album's every moment by osmosis. No more the chastened Irish youth of Rattle and Hum, they now bring to their listeners the novelty and the weight of new frontiers for a generation that chafed just as much from constriction. There is introspection, self-examination, romance, regret and loss, and a just a touch of humour, but through it all the unavoidable impression that change has come with infinite possibilities that loom and bloom all at once, and the world through our eyes would never be the same. The music captures the same lyric feel as the words, the chiming guitars of "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses," the wistful musing beat of "One," the biting saunter of "Mysterious Ways" and the mournful dirge of "Love Is Blindness." Few musical time capsules are more complete: as Bono's distorted vocals correctly call out in "Zoo Station," in those heady days every single one of us was ready for what was next. (Content: mild language in "Acrobat.")

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U2, Zooropa

Zoo TV, the inspiration for Zooropa, was supposed to be an exploration of sensory overload and I am relieved to report that the actual album is nothing of the sort (well, maybe the ghastly album art is, but not the music itself). True, stylistically it picks up where the highly experimental Achtung Baby left off, but it develops it and makes it more refined rather than just wallowing in it. Part of that is no doubt the expertise of Brian Eno and Flood, but part of it is also an increased understanding of how to merge their past with the future: they may have thrown it in for laughs, but the classic vocals of Johnny Cash on the final track backed by a marvelously artificial bogus cowboy riff pretty much represents the album in miniature. "Stay" and "Some Days Are Better Than Others" could have come off an earlier work, but with a little sweetening and stylistic assimilation they slot right in. They also add new tricks to their audio repertoire such as drowning The Edge's vocals in the drony mix of "Numb" to impressive effect, and while Bono's falsetto will never reach Russell Mael's it's a fun little counterpoint on that and "Lemon." Good bands mature, but great bands evolve. (Content: no concerns.)

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