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On U2's best albums (The Joshua Tree; Achtung Baby), the answer is both. But convergence rarely happens here. Some songs — like "Stand Up Comedy," a goofball attempt at funk — are explicitly told through Bono's rose-colored specs. ("Stand up to rock stars, Napoleon is in high heels/ Josephine, be careful of small men with big ideas.") But on the otherwise breezy power pop of "I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight," the rock star can't resist intruding with a lyric that first appeared as a pull quote in several of his magazine profiles ("The right to appear ridiculous is something I hold dear"). After a few albums of disciplined universality and lyrics everyone can relate to, the man has earned the right to sing his life, and plenty of people are interested in the thoughts of the philanthropic and famous. But the pleasures these moments provide are at best voyeuristic; they create distance between U2 and the average listener, while great pop — the kind this band used to produce consistently — strives to erase distance. (See the 100 best albums of all time.)
To his credit, Bono never stops noodling with ways to make a connection. He slips into characters (a soldier in "White as Snow," a journalist in "Cedars of Lebanon"), scats like a young Beat poet and, in a moment he will probably regret, impersonates your office IT guy ("Restart and reboot yourself") on a ham-fisted attempt at life-coaching. Multiple times he asks, "Let me in the sound," as if looking for a place to hide.
But the sound doesn't provide much refuge. Work on No Line on the Horizon began in 2007, when the band decamped to Morocco with Brian Eno and Danny Lanois, the men who oversaw U2's 1980s transformation from anthem singers to makers of textured, daring rock. As a hedge, the band also paid visits to Dublin and London to check in with Steve Lillywhite, who helped U2 crank out some of its muscular early and recent hits. (Most bands would have to take out a second mortgage to cover the per diem for just one of these producers.)
Not surprisingly, the album lacks a unified feel. On a few tracks, the Edge, drummer Larry Mullen Jr. and bassist Adam Clayton sound at home rumbling through the verses and blowing out the choruses in the old familiar way. But as No Line trudges on, it slumps under the weight of its own need to surprise. Eno invented the bleeps and whirs that are mixed into the background of so many rock albums, and used as seasoning, his effects still have the power to create mystery. (On the title track, it sounds as if Bono is duetting with a quasar — very cool.) The problem is that too often Eno's tricks are the steak. Melody — the most surprising effect of all — dodges in and out but rarely makes itself at home, and all we're left with is an increasingly dull series of tricks killing time where the tunes should be.
The one song that seems to work on all the levels U2 intended is "Moment of Surrender." Clocking in at more than seven minutes and moving with the deliberate shuffle of a man wandering empty streets, it gives Bono a shot to channel Sinatra at his loneliest. You can hear an organ and a cello and a lot of other sounds that are hard to pinpoint, but they gradually converge into a heartbreaking melody as Bono stares into the reflection of an ATM and discovers he can no longer recognize his own face. As the tune fades out, he lets loose another of his famous "Oh-oh-ohs," and it's hard not to hear an echo of his closing blast on "With or Without You" but in a minor key. U2 has clearly found itself stuck in a very strange moment of self-reckoning. And a great band's horizon has never looked so close.
Read TIME's 2005 cover story about U2.