Review: U2: No Line on the Horizon I How I learnt to love U2

Like most right-thinking people, I grew up hating U2. You probably recognise the symptoms. Queasy unease when Bono claims ownership of the Third World's suffering from a stadium stage or TV screen; nausea when he's pictured with his arms around Bush or Blair, who his own drummer calls “war criminals”. And that wet thud of disappointment when U2's breathlessly hyped new album is just as stodgy and Coldplay-esque as the last.

And yet, annoyingly, I'm strangely excited about their latest album, No Line On The Horizon. Perhaps, after 25 years of qualified loathing and grudging admiration, I've learnt to stop worrying and love U2.

During my teens and early twenties, U2 were easy to hate, with their windswept mullets and bombastic battle anthems. Their music was monochrome and sexless, all windy platitudes disguised as Big Themes. They also seemed suspiciously keen to co-opt half a century of pop history and global struggle for their own self-promotional ends: from Elvis to Joy Division, Billie Holiday to Martin Luther King, African famine to the fall of communism.

Times Archive, 1983: U2 live in Dublin

Bono had the crowd eating from the palm of his hand

But superimposing yourself on to great historical events doesn't confer greatness by association. You just look like ambulance chasers. The Forrest Gumps of rock.

I first wrote about U2 in NME in the early 1990s, soon after their Achtung Baby album. In this period there was a big shift in the band's musical hinterland, from wide-open, hope-filled vistas to nocturnal cityscapes of doubt, despair, distorted guitars and diabolical desires. But it felt fraudulent. I criticised U2's clumsy attempts to hijack the integrity of more sincere, innovative artists. In response, Bono sent an axe over to the NME office. As in hatchet job. Geddit?

But now: a shameful confession. With apologies to fellow U2-haters, I began to fall for their charms in the mid-1990s. With their 1995 side project, Passengers, and their 1997 album, Pop, they seemed willing to experiment - and, more importantly, to fail. Their music became more humorous, colourful, adventurous and self-mocking. U2 grasped the importance of not being earnest. Crucially, they also looked like they were having fun for the first time, rather than carrying the world's woes on their messianic shoulders.

Pop became U2's first major commercial stiff, alienating much of their traditional fanbase with its kaleidoscopic camp and disco kitsch. But the accompanying PopMart tour was fantastic, and remains the most dazzling stadium spectacular I've yet seen. Any superstar rockers prepared to emerge from a giant lemon-shaped glitterball every night to a thunderous wave of pumping techno are clearly not taking themselves too seriously. I was convinced.

And then - they blew it again. After burning their fingers with Pop, U2 greeted the new millennium by retreating to old monochrome certainties on their past two albums, All That You Can't Leave Behind and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. Both were safe, plodding affairs calculated to win back the band's commercial heartland. Reverting to type, taking care of business.

U2's hard-nosed business methods are a red rag to my fellow haters. In 2006 the band were criticised for moving a chunk of their huge Irish operation to a more “tax efficient” regime in the Netherlands. Bono the charity cheerleader was singled out as a hypocrite, which arguably he is. But attacking U2 for being profit-driven is like criticising sharks for being predators. They have always been disarmingly frank about their ambition to be the biggest band in the world, and the Faustian deals they will strike to get there. The history of rock is a parade of millionaire tax exiles, not left-wing revolutionaries. Pop stars are capitalists. Get over it.

The chink in U2's armour is said to be Bono's outspoken charity work on African poverty and Aids: and, yes, there are many arguments against celebrities dabbling in global politics. But if the U2 singer has saved just one life in his decades of activism, all such criticism looks pretty flimsy.

U2 are bound to stir debate. After all, the Times critic David Sinclair branded them “rock's last superpower”. Bono has been criticised from both right and left; for doing too much or too little. But at least he is prepared get his hands dirty on complex, prickly problems instead of retreating into perpetual pampered adolescence like most millionaire rockers.

Who else in pop has the clout and arrogance to badger world leaders, hoping to shape global poverty policy? Even as a sometime U2 hater, this seems to me a valid use of celebrity power. Ethical contradictions do not make U2 a lesser band; they are precisely what makes them interesting.

But let's not forget the foundation of it all: the music. After two drab albums, No Line On The Horizon marks a step change for U2. Although not quite the Achtung Baby-style leap promised by early reports, it is their most sexy and experimental work for more than a decade. A mix of lustrous electronica, Arabic instrumentation and revved-up guitar riffs, it sounds like a band having fun again.

A bizarre historical pendulum appears to be at work here. When the Republican Ronald Reagan was in the White House, U2 made thumpingly earnest and conservative records. Under the Democrat Bill Clinton, they loosened up and embraced sleazy hedonism. With George W. Bush, back to one-dimensional pomposity again. This bodes well for their albums in the Obama era.

About now, my fellow U2 haters, those familiar symptoms should be kicking in. The urge to smash the TV whenever Bono appears. The wave of bile as Get On Your Boots blasts from every radio. But try to fight it. Deep breath. The sickness will pass.

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