Bono and the U2 boys still engaged, energetic

'Let me in the sound, meet me in the sound, let me in the sound!" Bono repeats, insists, and implores over chugging guitars on U2's "Get on Your Boots," the first single from

No Line on the Horizon

(Interscope ***), due in stores Tuesday.

Four years after How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, the biggest band in the world has returned with an album recorded in New York, London, and Morocco.

Two cuts after "Boots," on "FEZ - Being Born," the indefatigable Irishman is at it again, this time with the same words echoing out from a textured organic-electronic mix. It's as if the owner of the most fulsome foghorn in rock - who said to me in 2007, "I'm sick of the sound of my own voice" - is being forced to fight for room in the sonic space being created by the other boys in the band.

On most of No Line, those boys include U2's guitarist, the Edge, bass player Adam Clayton, and drummer Larry Mullen Jr., as well as celebrated producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. (Lanois, curiously, has been rechristened "Danny" on the credits, though he has been Daniel on every other U2 album he has worked on since 1984's The Unforgettable Fire.)

But never fear. Though Bono is outnumbered five to one, he still succeeds in making himself heard. Often, in fact, he's singing about his own singing, as he does in the not-quite-frenzied "I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight," when he acts out the mid-life crisis of a rock-star-turned-Nobel-Peace-Prize-candidate-and-New-York-Times-columnist by crying out: "Listen for me / I'll be shouting, shouting to the darkness."

Oh, we can hear you all right, Bono. And there are moments when it all becomes too much - like at the start of the too-long, seven-minute-plus "Moment of Surrender," which aims to be the album's "One"-like emotional epicenter. On it, the singer hollers, "I tied myself with wire / To let the horses run free," as if depicting himself as a Christian martyr. Or in the following song, "Unknown Caller," which employs the off-putting ploy of imitating an inhuman customer-service automaton, and begs for the listener to hit the "end this call" button.

But, though the musician may be hard to bear, this review's purpose is not Bono-bashing. On the contrary: It's pro-Bono. Sure, No Line may not be the Moroccan-flavored departure it has been hyped as. If you want No Line to be a truly mind-expanding trip, you'll have to bring your own hookah. And the album doesn't have the experimental pizzazz of 1991's Achtung, Baby, or contain anything as flat-out fun as "Vertigo," on Atomic Bomb.

But it's still an engaged, energetic, and sometimes emotionally powerful U2 album that will please the band's fans, above all, because after a four-year wait, that's exactly what it sounds like: a U2 album.

And along with the Edge's delay-pedal guitar shimmer (and some ripping Jack White-style riffage on "Get on Your Boots" and "Stand Up Comedy"), and the essential contributions of the aforementioned rhythm section and production team, Bono, with his tendency toward the heroic ululation and rapturous chorus, has a whole lot to do with that.

As has become his habit in recent years, Bono here and there punctures his own balloon of save-the-world seriousness, most amusingly in "Stand Up Comedy." "Stand up to rock stars, Napoleon is in high heels," the 5-foot-8 mouthpiece sings, advising his audience to question pomposity. "Josephine, be careful of small men with big ideas."

Which is not to say that he has any intention of keeping any of those big ideas to himself. "Is it true the perfect love drives out all fear?" the man in the yellow-tinted glasses asks in "Crazy." He responds, though, with a defense of rock-star frivolity: "The right to appear ridiculous is something I hold dear."

No Line's title, and title track, refer to the limitless capabilities of music as a tool of communication, and of love as an agent of healing. And it alludes to how both of those things, together, can be used as a means of escape from a limiting day-to-day existence.

But for a U2 album that means to explore the outer edges, No Line is often surprisingly measured. It's not so grandiose as you might expect, or fear. "Get on Your Boots" takes a page out of Elvis Costello's "Pump It Up" and kicks up a storm while exploring the idea that male leaders have made such a hash of things, it's time to hand the reins over to female heads of state.

And "Magnificent" may not quite live up to its title, but it does deliver a whiff of the epic sweep that has been the band's calling card since a mulleted Bono waved a white flag on stage, back in the early '80.

No Line's most poignant and effective moment, however, is its most muted. And that is "White As Snow," a minimalist ballad partially inspired by William Golding's novel Pincher Martin, with a tune from the Lutheran hymn "Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel." It's sung in the voice of a dying soldier in Afghanistan, and it's a beautiful song. And though it's clearly written in character, it feels as personal as anything Bono has ever penned, and suggests that, should he and his most heroic of bands remain intent on their journey, there are still inward horizons toward which they can still strive.