INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES
New Musical Express JANUARY 4, 2016 - by James Hendicott
THE EDGE COMPARES NEXT U2 ALBUM 'SONGS OF INNOCENCE' TO ZOOROPA
Progress is being made on the companion to Songs Of Innocence
The Edge has revealed that progress is being made on the next U2 album, and that it sounds like the band's 1993 album Zooropa.
Songs Of Experience is expected sometime in 2016, and is a companion record to 2014's Songs Of Innocence, with the two titles combining to form the name of the Dublin act's recent world tour.
In an interview with Q magazine, The Edge reveals some details of the record, including that parts of it have been completed on down time in between tour dates. Bono also recently revealed that he wrote a song about the Paris attacks during the band's recent tour.
In the interview, guitarist The Edge first compared the record to Zooropa, and then said producer Brian Eno would like a similar path to the eighth album to be followed in the future. He said:
"[Eno] would love to see us making albums a bit more like that. Where we go, 'You know what? We're not going to second-guess any of this. Let's just go for it.' I think there's a quality you get when there's a certain momentum to the process."
Bono, meanwhile, revealed in the same interview that the bike accident he suffered in New York around the turn of 2014/2015 has actually helped him with the record.
The frontman said "The gift of it was that I had time to write while in the mentality that you get to at the end of an album. There is a reason why all the great groups made their best albums while in and around touring, because the ideas have to come out of your head."
U2 finished their Innocence And Experience Tour with shows in Paris before Christmas, with Bono rounding off his year by busking on Dublin's Grafton Street with a host of other big-name local acts.
ALBUMS | BIOGRAPHY | BOOKS | INSTALLATIONS | INTERVIEWS | LYRICS | MULTIMEDIA