Grace inside a sound

I take back my statement that nothing of real theological substance has yet been written on NLOTH. Go check out this piece by Steven Harmon. Excerpt:
The basic message of No Line is that earth is not yet heaven, and therefore the album summons us to "Get On Your Boots" and work toward the day when things will fully be on earth as they are in heaven -- when heaven and earth will be indistinguishable, and there will at last be no line on the horizon. Moving in that direction requires the triumph "of vision over visibility" ("Moment of Surrender"), an echo of an earlier formulation of the same insight: that the things that last and that come at the last constitute "a place that has to be believed to be seen" ("Walk On" from 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind). It also requires an inner transformation wrought by a receptive hearing of the voice of God ("Unknown Caller") and a faithful reception of the love of God which requires that one both "stand up" for it and "sit down" to receive it ("Stand Up Comedy"). The central eschatological metaphor of No Line is the sound of the divine song, heard only by those who have the ears to hear it, yet unconsciously sought by everyone, for all people were created to hear and sing this song. Seven of the album's 11 songs invoke that metaphor in one way or another.

BTW, my answer to your "fifth point Calvinist" jab, Steve, is that the sense of the line can just as easily be "Justified, you and I will magnify the Magnificent until we die." ;-)

Between: Tryin' to throw your arms around the world (1)

A brief older piece on spirituality in U2, which maintains that its two chief characteristics are "movement" and "failure."

Time won't leave me as I am

I've been watching for reviews of NLOTH that have some theological substance. So far, pretty slim pickings. Beliefnet's Idol Chatter post on the album doesn't, but Christianity Today's does. Most insightful bit, I think, is this:
[The album] explores themes that are expanded on and developed from song to song. There are the usual "is it Jesus or a girlfriend?" teases, but those looking for more depth will find much to savor. This is an album all about time: the ravages of the inexorable march of hours and days, chronos and kairos, calendar time and clock time vs. those moments that are out of time, that sustain us, those in which we encounter something of the Divine. It's a theme explored explicitly in "Moment of Surrender" and "Unknown Caller," and obliquely in later tracks such as the anthemic rocker "Breathe" and the atmospheric closer, "Cedars of Lebanon." ...These are songs that could have never been written by Bono Vox, the naïve, idealistic youth of early albums. And as such, these are songs that could only have been written by Bono, the aging, iconic rock star in love with Jesus and himself in equal measure, and bothered by the incongruity.

The realm of certainty

All right, here's a comment. What's with all these completely contradictory reviews? White as Snow is the finest song U2 have ever written/White as Snow is boring and suffers from an ugly melody (the melody is of course "O Come O Come Emmanuel.") ...The album's highest point is very definitely Magnificent/ I'll Go Crazy/ Moment of Surrender/ The opening track/ Cedars of Lebanon/ Unknown Caller.... Unknown Caller is awful and best skipped because of its lame technology metaphors. (It's interesting how many people seem to have no idea what's going on in Unknown Caller.)This album rates a mere 2 out of 5 stars. /This album is as good as "Achtung Baby.".... At last they've stopped phoning in a safe version of themselves. /Here they are again, phoning in a safe version of themselves.... It's all Eno's fault./ Thank God for Eno.

With a Shout: Celebrating U2

In the run up to the official release of the new album, The Hurst Review collects reflections on the band and their work in rough chronological order from a number of writers, among them Andy Whitman of Paste, Russ Breimeier and Mark Moring of Christianity Today, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of All Music Guide, and yours truly (leading off with some thoughts on "I Will Follow"... and shockingly, the lone woman on the list! Whoa.)

Lyrics

Update: @U2 now has the full lyrics to U2's new album No Line on the Horizon up for your perusing pleasure. (Thanks for spelling minaret right, Ian.)

"a guitar is an instrument of change"

Rather taken with this comment which Fresno Dave highlighted, from here:

[On NLOTH] the "big statements"... masquerade as rock, but they have a spiritual pull that suck[s] you in and overwhelm[s]. On previous albums, Bono brazenly beseeched listeners to fall to their knees, but on tracks this potent, he doesn't have to ask - the impulse is instinctual.
...More significantly, it's the first album in eons in which U2 aren't noticeably trying on somebody else's clothes.

Infinity's a great place to start

I don't do album reviews here, but as with How to Dismantle I do want to reserve the right to write a bit on some of No Line's songs. Nowhere near ready to do that yet, but one thought that keeps hovering around my mind is the level of self-differentiated emotional and spiritual maturity that shines through. There's the U2 joy, but it's not "here's our trademark joy pitched so as to get on the radio." There are what everyone calls U2 spiritual themes, but not packaged with careful accessibility for listeners. There are killer riffs, but not weighed and measured out across tracks like a recipe.

The thing I keep feeling tempted to say, but am wary of saying because it's far too early, is: perhaps we are finally seeing a band nearing age 50, with 33 years longevity as a community and (for most of them) a similar longevity as followers of Christ, at mature peace with themselves and the lives they've made, writing out of that place uncensored. I don't feel like this record is looking nervously over its shoulder at bands who are 25 years younger, at listeners who have a different or no spiritual grounding, or at fans who might not be interested in the kinds of epiphanies, brass-tacks convictions, and caution-to-the-winds self-definitions one has at midlife. I may be forming the opinion that NLOTH is just speaking from where it really lives. Out of the kind of truth human beings only get to after many years -- complex, unshakeable, multilayered, able to laugh at itself, irenically sure of what it relies on. The kind of truth U2 have often heretofore reserved for sharing in brief nuggets during interviews.

That's what I feel tempted to say. But I'm not sure we can say it for a long time yet.

Conference news

It was a shame to learn today that the U2 academic conference has been postponed due to the current economic woes. Everything else and everyone else is getting delayed, cancelled, laid off, cut, or cut back too, so I can't say it's very surprising. There may be a silver lining, however, since the hope is to look at U2's tour schedule and explore "possibilities for having the conference in a city close to their concert dates."

U2: No Line On The Horizon - full review (plus what Bono really thinks) :: Neil McCormick

Among the dozen or so reviews that have surfaced in the past few days, readers here might enjoy taking a look at the one by Neil McCormick on his Telegraph blog. The theme of the album, says Neil, is surrender.

Comment on a recent review

You know, I try not to do many posts which are purely editorializing here (and I know I probably fail) but... am I the only one who was brought up short by this passage in the Independent.ie's official review of NLOTH?

There are several euphoric moments and lots of allusions to redemption. Songs like "Moment of Salvation" [sic] - which, at more than seven minutes long, definitely outstays its welcome - is loaded with lyrics referencing "soul", "God" and "fire". The atmospheric "Unknown Caller" is cut from the same cloth. Let's face it, it would hardly be a U2 album if Bono wasn't engaged by such themes - and if you're one of the many who finds this sort of stuff off-putting, much of the album simply won't work for you.
There are plenty of songs that won't have such a divisive effect, however.

So given that we agree that "it would hardly be a U2 album" if the band didn't write from the redemptive perspective they have drawn on for 33 years, in what sense is it helpful to dismiss a couple *particular* moments within that perspective with pejorative language like "divisive"? There are certainly people who can't stomach U2 at all because of the worldview underlying their work, and I respect that outlook. But here, doesn't pinning blame on particular examples of their art for having "such a divisive effect" mean something a bit more like "I don't like Christianity, and I'm uncomfortable because unlike the other nine tracks, I couldn't find a way to ignore the Christian worldview in these two"?

Audio of an older U2 lecture

While we all digest the "No Line" track version 2 and wait to see what we'll hear next...
Thanks to Doug who writes to say that an MP3 of a talk entitled "How to Dismantle an Atomic Band: U2, Celebrity and Christian Identity" by Ned O'Gorman from the Francis Schaeffer Institute at Covenant Theological Seminary is available online (scroll down). I posted about this when it happened in 2005, but I don't think any audio was made available then, so just in case some of you want to hear it...

Amazon.com: U2: MP3 Downloads

Off topic: Just thought some of you might be interested in knowing that Amazon.com has nearly U2's entire catalog at $5.99 an MP3 album right now -- and this price includes the 2-disc remasters released over the past couple years.

Let Me In The Sound

Writer R.S. Toss, who may or may not have been reading a few of the recent comboxes here, publishes a guest article about his interpretation of the lyric "Let Me In The Sound" at @U2. Try as I may, I can't make myself believe that "sound" means anything but an aural "sound" in this text, even though his argumentation intellectually makes more sense; however, your mileage may vary. Incidentally, anyone have anything to say about the repeated glass-shattering -- one thing that made it almost unchanged to the rather more decorous final version -- at this point in the video?

What song would you most like U2 to cover (that they never have).....

Early last month I stole @U2's question of the month about covers, tweaking it a little for this venue, and some of you responded with some great answers. If you'd like to see what kind of responses they got, the @U2 QOM January 2009 is up.

Rock and Theology

Readers here may want to check out a relatively new blog, the Rock and Theology Project, which gathers (so far, two Roman Catholic) academic theologians who also play in rock bands for conversation about the interface between the two. Some of it is rather heavy going unless you're pretty far over on the philosophical theology end of the spectrum, but I expect some of you may be. Probably not likely to be much U2 content on a blog like that one, but if that's all you're in it for, you might want to read this comment on how "Bono regularly infuses rock with a theology of grace that captures the best insights into the paradoxical relationship between 'willing' and 'being' in the spiritual life." Or you may prefer "Five-Finger Discount: Augustine, Night Ranger, and the Delight of Transgression."

33:3 ----> 3:33

As a follow up to yesterday's post, a friend forwards a new article which mentions that the song "Unknown Caller" happens at "3:33 am." I'm assuming anyone who was around when All That You Can't Leave Behind was released can identify that "calling" reference without much help.

As some lyrics from No Line on the Horizon begin to filter out in the press, I'm reminded of a conversation I had with friends a week or so ago. I was idly wondering whether close attention to the number of direct citations of classic English Biblical phraseology in U2 songs would find a decline, in favor of more efforts to express Biblical ideas in original words, since Bono's enthusiasm for The Message took root in, what, 1999? Just offhand, based purely on instinct, I tend to think of the last two albums as more interested in communicating Biblical thought patterns than in echoing Biblical language. Of course, I may be off base, but some of the texts that are showing up in the press have the same ring to me:

Reportedly from "Unknown Caller" -- "Hear me/Cease to speak/That I may speak/Shush now." Obviously a Psalm 46:10 sort of vibe, but no quotation.
Reportedly from "Magnificent" -- "I was born to sing for you/I didn't have a choice but to lift you up." Kind of Jeremiah 1-ish? (not to mention All Because of You-ish)

I suppose also that I should add that the "reboot yourself" and "only love can reset your mind" language from "Unknown Caller" to me instantly evokes this earlier self-description from Bono: "That to me is the spiritual life. The slow reworking and rebooting of a computer at regular intervals. It has slowly rebuilt me in a better image. It has taken years, though, and it is not over yet."