U2 to release album 'Songs Of Experience'

ROCK GIANTS U2 are continuing to talk about their new album 'Songs Of Experience'. Spanish fan page U2 en España spoke to the band in Valencia recently. Said Bono, "It's not finished yet but you will like it. In terms of lyrics it is stronger than [1983 album] 'War', it has more clarity."

Talking of 'Songs Of Experience', bassist Adam Clayton said, "The idea was really that we wanted to make sure we focused on the '[Songs Of] Experience' album. By the time we finished the Innocence tour and came full circle to focus on the album, it was clear we weren't going to be able to flip it really quickly into the 'Experience' side of the material and put it right back out on tour. As a challenge that was, 'OK, we're going to have to look at this differently.' Also, in the course of that year, some kind of strange political movements seemed to start happening. First of all, there was Brexit in the UK, which was just a signal that things were changing. I'm not sure how people took it. Then, quite quickly on the back of it, was the rise of Trumpism. And that was like, 'Oh, OK, there's something going on here. There's maybe something we missed and we need to start watching this.' That sort of encouraged us to go away from trying to finish the record too quickly without being able to factor in some of the things this is telling us."

U2 will also be doing a UK/European tour in 2017 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the 1987 'The Joshua Tree'. Guitarist The Edge drew parallels between the world at the time of writing 'The Joshua Tree' and the world today. He said, "That record was written in the mid-'80s, during the Reagan-Thatcher era of British and US politics. It was a period when there was a lot of unrest. Thatcher was in the throes of trying to put down the miners' strike; there was all kinds of shenanigans going on in Central America. It feels like we're right back there in a way. I don't think any of our work has ever come full circle to that extent. It just felt like, 'Wow, these songs have a new meaning and a new resonance today that they didn't have three years ago, four years ago.' And so it was kind of serendipitous, really, just the realization that we needed to put the album on ice for a minute just too really think about it one more time before putting it out, just to make sure that it really was what we wanted to say."