Fact #176338

Having heard the full-on but banal Get On Your Boots before getting my hands on U2’s 12th studio album, I wasn’t expecting much, but it exceeds my expectations. U2’s tried and trusted production triumvirate of Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite ensure that it sounds rich and luminously textured but, beyond this, quite a few of the songs are actually worth hearing. Stand Up Comedy and Breathe are predictable, FEZ – Being Born is a mess, but there’s a lightness of touch in Magnificent and a stately ambience to Moment Of Surrender and Cedars Of Lebanon. Dinosaurs they may be but dead they certainly ain’t.
Johnny Black (review first appeared in Hi Fi News, 2009)