Inside U2's Bold New 'Horizon' : Rolling Stone

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The Edge spent time in the past year hanging out and jamming with Jack White and Jimmy Page for the documentary It Might Get Loud, and something seems to have rubbed off: "He's developing a third testicle, that's what is happening to the Edge," Bono theorizes. "I just hope it's not catching." Some of the songs began as solo GarageBand demos by the Edge, but others developed as full-band improvisations (often sparked by moody loops introduced by Eno) during sessions in Dublin, the South of France and Fez, Morocco — with Eno and Lanois playing keyboards and guitar, respectively.

"We start simple, we get complicated, and then we re-simplify it," says Eno, as he tweaks on his computer what he estimates to be the 80th incarnation of a song called "Breathe." "It's been a longer process, but I think it's compositionally stronger than anything they've done for a long time." That said, Eno is irked that the band has dropped some of the more contemplative and sonically adventurous songs it developed. "Tell them they're being stupid cunts," he jokes, after playing a lovely discarded ballad called "Winter."

Still, there are plenty of unexpected sounds. One concept for the album was a division between "daylight" songs — with organic instruments and arrangements — and "after-dark" songs. On the latter, Bono says, "we allow our interest in electronic music, in Can, Neu! and Kraftwerk, to come out." Among those songs is the title track, which has a churning, tribal groove and a deadpan chorus, and the ambitious possible album opener "Tripoli," which violently lurches between different sections. And then there's the astonishing seven-minute "Moment of Surrender," which merges a Joshua Tree-style gospel feel with a hypnotically loping bass line and a syncopated beat.

"Moment" was played just one time — the band improvised the version on the album from thin air. "This kind of spirit blows through every now and then," Bono says. "It's a very strange feeling. We're waiting for God to walk into the room — and God, it turns out, is very unreliable. So you don't have the right to imagine you can make a great album. But what you can do is create the conditions where it might happen."

[From Issue 1070 — January 22, 2009]

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