U2 | No Line On the Horizon

Instead, allow me to make a smaller but no less salient point about No Line on the Horizon, U2's third album since getting back to the business of being U2 a little over a decade ago: it's proof that right now nobody is better at mingling the expansive and the intimate. These 11 tunes deliver both the thematic and the sonic hugeness we expect from U2; you only have to proceed about 80 seconds into the opening title track before the Edge is spraying his trademark guitar sparks everywhere and Bono is observing that infinity is a great place to start. (To start!)

Yet No Line is also packed with fine-grain detail that demonstrates how engaged these guys still are in the art of record making, and how deeply they still yearn to make their music feel like something you can step inside of: the killer dub-gospel bass line in "Moment of Surrender," for example, and the flicker of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" in "White As Snow." This stuff isn't just ear candy, either (though it's definitely that); it works toward a kind of musical architecture. Get off your boots and stay a while.