sexy boots (no line on the horizon)

Satellite radio in the car tuned to a pop station in the U.K., where you know the new U2 single will be on heavy rotation today, you wait for it: "Get On Your Boots," the first single from U2's newest offering, No Line on the Horizon, which has been four years in the making.

You wait for the song, then you wait for your impression of the song. It's been a long time, after all, and you want to savor the experience. Want to mark the date time place that it happened to you, this go 'round.

You've been with the band since just about the beginning. A freshman in high school is about as far back as you can remember understanding that it would be their music that made up the soundtrack to your life, but it could have been before then. Anyway, high school, and your sister discovered them first, gave a copy of the Boy album to Todd Gardner for a listen. He returned it a few days later with a "meh," and a shrug of his shoulders. You bet he's a die hard fan now.

So many years on, and you want it, this new album, to matter just as much as every other one before it has. Because U2 has always been the music in you, and you're afraid that if they don't matter anymore, then one of a few things has happened: They've either run their course (unthinkable), you've moved on (unimaginable), or you just don't care like you used to. Which, if you think about it -- if they've always moved you, have always been the back beat to your experiences, the metronome by which you mark your memories -- is kinda sad.

Because where are you then, when the soundtrack to your life goes mute, or stops playing altogether?

In "Get On Your Boots," you hear some familiar U2. It's not apparent at first, and then it is. Also some Beatles references? Maybe? The rest... you're not sure of yet. You'll take your time to make up your mind.

What you do like, at first pass, is this:

Women of the future/Hold the big revelations, and this: You don't know how beautiful you are, and this: Let me in the sound.

Which is exactly what you are wanting to happen, too.