Confession of Faith

Sara gave me U2's most recent album, No Line on the Horizon, for my birthday. Before peeling back the impossible plastic around the jewel casing, I had only read a few reviews of this work. Those reviews had echoed the sentiment of one rag, which referred to "the album's ballyhooed experimentation" as "either terribly misguided or hidden underneath a wash of shameless U2-isms."

These sentiments did not dimish my excitement for receiving the album. At first listen, I found it different than all the other U2 albums I know, but also distinctively U2 (perhaps because of its "U2-isms"?). And I kept listening.

It's different enough that if I had sampled it in a music store or heard it on a website without knowing who the band was, I would not have purchased it. And precisely at the moment I realize this virtue of the album, I re-discover a truth about myself.

I trust U2.

I have such faith in U2 that I will listen to melodies, harmonies, chord progressions and electronica that otherwise would not appeal to me. I will give them a chance, and hear their story; I will come to these songs on their own terms because I trust this band.

I have heard the album through about ten or fifteen times now, and I am starting to really enjoy it. The enjoyment has only come with repetition: learning the melodies, discerning the limping meter of Moment of Surrender, and being led into the shadows of the final track. Part of the journey, too, is searching out which song on any given U2 album is the worship song. (Which one is it on No Line on the Horizon?)

It's worth sticking it out and getting to the marrow of the album, because here I discover what I have discovered about all U2 albums (even the least-received Zooropa and Pop): U2 will speak the truth about human experience. For their muddled, twisted, topsy-turvy exploration of the human condition that appeals to my generation, I trust U2. This is my confession of faith: I trust U2 to probe the nooks and crannies of the cosmos and set memory to music.

They do it differently than Metallica, Pink Floyd, or Christina Aguilera--though I think I can hear the cousin of Metallica in the first track, and the lunar shadow of Pink Floyd here and there. And it's always U2. Is that what the reviewer meant by "U2-isms": the fact that I can always seem to tell that it's Bono behind the microphone?

If so, then I'll take some U2-isms, as long as they're still dealing out something even better than the real thing: poetic chords ringing and cords singing for the depth of human experience. And I hope they're shameless. The poet ashamed of his work ought not to sing at all.

~emrys