U2’s new album, Songs of Experience, is worth the wait and a return to what they do best
Bono’s health scares and the 30th anniversary tour of The Joshua Tree, meant the Irish rockers’ 14th studio record was a labour of love. The result is the band’s best release in recent years, with all their signature sounds intact
Much more so than Songs of Innocence, however, U2 has made an exciting, stage-ready album that doesn’t blush or blink in its use of the band’s signature sounds – The Edge’s chiming guitar, Adam Clayton’s trebly, adhesive bass, Larry Mullen Jnr’s sharp and responsive drums and Bono’s heart-on-his-vocal-cords singing.
Songs of Experience, to be released this Friday, was supposed to be completed “soon enough” after Songs of Innocence, but things kept getting in the way of their 14th studio album getting made.
From the automatic iTunes download fiasco of Innocence, to Bono’s debilitating bicycle accident in New York three years ago and another, more recent, yet-to-be-described health scare, stalled progress.
Plus the changing political landscape and the wildly successful 30th anniversary tour of The Joshua Tree, which is barely over, meant sometimes the pause button was getting pressed and sometimes it was rewind or rip it up and start again.