Apparently U2 are working on new music. In an interview with Jo Whiley last night on Radio 2 no less an authority than The Edge confirmed that the band and Brian Eno are busy on what he described as “crazy sci fi Irish folk music”.
The mind boggles. Anyhow, the key thing is that they are on it. These last few years have been lean times for U2 fans (at least in Europe). Aside from one standalone single, they haven’t released any new music since 2017’s Songs Of Experience album.
Instead there has been a succession of retrospective projects – the ‘re-imagining’ of their back catalogue that was Songs Of Surrender, Bono’s memoir and more recently what they’re describing as the “shadow” album to 2004’s How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, cunningly titled How To Reassemble An Atomic Bomb.
That’s released on Friday and is what The Edge was ostensibly promoting on Whiley’s show. Conversation naturally turned to recent activities – the band’s Sphere residency and Larry Mullen’s current fitness (the drummer sat out their run at the Sphere).
“We’ve got him in the studio,” the guitarist said. “He’s good, he’s taking it easy but he’s back in the saddle on the drums still doing some recording with us and so we’ll be doing a bit more of that before the end of the year.”
“And then Bono and I are working on some crazy kind of sci-fi Irish folk music,” he continued, “which could end up becoming a part of the new U2 album, we’re not sure yet we’ll see. Part of our kind of process is to go so widely away from, off track, and then sort of the process of bringing things back on track is kind of how you get sort of unique sounding music…
"We have Brian Eno involved. And a bunch of, you know some beautiful, Irish musicians, you know so incredibly talented.”
Eno and U2 haven’t worked together since 2009’s No Line On The Horizon. The years since have been difficult – artistically, at least - for the band. After years of over-thinking and procrastination they finally released the follow up Songs Of Innocence in September 2014, as a free download – famously it popped up one morning on every Apple device on the planet. Arguably, the band have yet to recover from what’s commonly regarded as one of the 21st Century’s most notorious PR disasters. Fans will be hoping that by engaging with Eno once more – he co-produced their hugely successful run of albums from The Unforgettable Fire onwards - U2 might yet rediscover their creative mojo.
