The big dogs are back! It has been nearly nine years since U2 released Songs Of Experience, their last proper studio album of new music. This fall, right around the band's 50th anniversary, they will return with a new LP called Carnaval de Luz. The first thing that you need to know about it is that Bono wears a fucking top hat on the cover.
This year, U2 released the surprise EPs Days Of Ash and Easter Lily, as well as the Martin Garrix collab "Fireflies" and a cover of the Pogues' "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah." U2 recorded Carnaval de Luz with producer Jackknife Lee, who has worked on their last few records. Brian Eno and played keyboards on three tracks, and Daniel Lanois played pedal steel on one, which makes me wonder why they didn't just bring back Eno and Lanois as producers.
The song with the Daniel Lanois pedal steel is "Torn," which features the final vocal performance from the late Dolly Parton. U2 co-wrote that song with Parton and Snow Patrol member/Ed Sheeran collaborator Johnny McDaid. "Street Of Dreams," the single that U2 released in July, is on the record. There's also a song called "The Mirror Maker (Rosalía)," which does not feature Rosalía and which briefly drove your Stereogum staff into confusion.
Here's a statement from Bono:
Roll up, roll up, roll up! Bring your purple socks, your broken hearts, your rose-tinted naivety… oh be amazed in the hall of mirrors. There will be loud guitars, deep bass, some ecstatic rhythms and, yes, some silver tears will make an appearance!
'Cause in the near distance just outside our carnival of light there are all kinds of creatures… the same imagination that brings us our creativity can also bring us monsters. So we make the drums louder. We build a bigger fire. We make our stories wilder and funnier. We make the melodies sweeter and the songs, they better shine, because if the world is in darkness we better not be.
The Edge adds that the record "features the first-ever use of flat-wound strings on a U2 recording," so look out for that.
A press release describes lead single "Silencio" as a "2mins 35second homage to early surf-punk insolence," but I don't hear that. It just kind of sounds like a late-period U2 song to me. Ryan Tedder did some additional production on it. In the Cliqua-directed video, Bono ditches the top hat and borrows Edge's cowboy hat instead. Actually, Bono probably owns his own cowboy hat. He might even own several of them. All four members of U2 probably have generous cowboy hat budgets. Anyway, that's below.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Go (Carnaval De Luz)"
02 "La Reina"
03 "Street Of Dreams"
04 "The Mirror Maker (Rosalía)"
05 "Superficiality"
06 "If The World Is At War We Better Not Be"
07 "Silencio"
08 "The Greatest Show On Earth"
09 "Glorify"
10 "Midnight Sunshine"
11 "Can’t Stop Us Now"
12 "Torn" (Feat. Dolly Parton)
Carnaval de Luz is out 11/13 on Island. Pre-order it here.
