u2... when the love has gone...

I've been a U2 fan since the age of 10 when The Joshua Tree hit me like an alien invasion of my young planet. As such, it's always seemed as though U2 are the soundtrack to my life, for better or worse. In recent years however, our relationship has started to feel more like a dying marriage; we're civil, we're overly familiar to the point where it's hard to distinguish love and hate, we live with frequent disappointment... and we can't be truly honest in case the damage is permanent.

The strain is telling. Frankly, I just don't see the point of U2 any more. The new album, No Line on the Horizon, is all very well, but we've seen and heard literally all of it before. Sure, there's the odd flash of colour which the Edge, Eno and Lanois have managed to smuggle under the covers. But Adam and Larry could be playing on any album since Achtung Baby, and Bono seems to be living on a different planet to everyone (one where handy interview-soundbites pass for lyrics). In places I swear it sounds as though they've been influenced by Coldplay. Orwell would piss himself then die laughing.

Somewhat counter-intuitively I believe U2 produce their best work when they're at their over-ambitious, grandiose peak; when they're trying so hard to do things they really can't pull off that you can hear the seams splitting. Pop just doesn't suit them and never did. Nor dance, though with that rhythm section they should do better. Nor blues. No, it's saccharine, stadium sized, super-camera-phone moments which suit them and they do it better than anyone.

Curiously, the album takes in U2's own musical history. So "Unknown Caller" could be lifted from War, while "Moment of Surrender" (how can Bono sing this with a straight face?) sounds like it was actually left over from All That You Can't... (cripes, perhaps it was...that might explain a few things..?), and "Fez - Being Born" is a (pale) imitation of the The Unforgettable Fire era epic-isms.

In a similar vein and harking back to Achtung Baby's Moroccan inspirations, they've made much of how parts of the album were recorded in Fez - you just wouldn't know it to listen to. Where's the collaboration with, say, Youssou N'Dour, Mory Kante, or Amadou & Miriam. Where's the north african instrumentation? The muezzin's call to prayer? The evening marketplace? The desert wind? Where, in short, is the adventure? Fez is an ancient city, with millenia of history beaten into the dust of every wandering alley. (Possibly unfairly) it sounds as though U2 popped in on a eurocoach for a day and a photo shoot.

The lowest points are in the middle; "Get on Your Boots" is the most empty, pointless song I've heard in U2 stripes, "Stand Up Comedy" is surely a song Bono actually wrote himself and then demanded be included despite reasonable objections from the Edge, while "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" (yes - on seeing the title you already know how bad this might turn out) honestly sounds like Bono in a bar singing karaoke to some long-buried Robbie Williams assault on popular radio (go on, I dare you - listen and imagine).

As much as I hate to say it, I finally accept that they need to break up the band. They need to smash it fast and clean. They're trapped and there is no way back. The spark has gone. Let's have the inevitable Greatest Hits Vol 3 and get it over with. After the earlier reinvention phase that was Zooropa, they again tried to freshen things with the Passengers experiment, being someone else, going out, meeting people, trying new things... a trial separation say... but they've come back and gotten stuck in the same tired old rut. Bono has a different audience now, while Larry and Adam have never been the creative soul. This leaves the Edge, clearly the author and creator behind everything they do, a slave to the behemoth he's created. Maybe 10 years apart and they'd come back afresh and firing. Or maybe it's just time to let go. Not sure I'll ever be able to turn my back completely .. we'll see.