New U2 album 'within months'

You wait five years for a U2 album, then two come along at once.

Their latest offering is still fresh on the shelves, but U2 yesterday revealed that their next effort could be in the shops within months.

Frontman Bono also said he knows what the first single from the next album, which would be a quick-fire follow-up to 'No Line On The Horizon', will be.

The new album will be called 'Songs of Ascent' and will be a sister album to their latest release - a trick U2 already pulled with 'Achtung Baby' and 'Zooropa' and in the early 1990s.

Bono said that it would be a quieter album than the current effort, and the lead single will be called 'Every Breaking Wave', a track pulled from 'No Line On the Horizon' at the last minute.

"We're making a kind of heartbreaker, a meditative, reflective piece of work, but not indulgent," he said, hinting it could arrive in the next year.

"It will have a clear mood, like [Miles Davis'] Kind of Blue. Or [John Coltrane's] A Love Supreme would be a point of reference, for the space it occupies in people's lives, which is to say, with that album, I almost take my shoes off to listen to it."

The quick follow-up would be in stark contrast to 'No Line On the Horizon' which saw recording sessions scattered over two years in five different countries, with four different producers.

"It is now easier and more affordable to record a song than at any other time in the history of recorded music," bassist Adam Clayton told the new edition of 'Rolling Stone' magazine. "Unless you're U2".

Bono and the Edge are also working on music for Julie Taymor's forthcoming Broadway musical 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark'. The singer told the magazine that he is also hopeful of getting an album's worth of material out of the "spider songs".

"If we do, it'll be a monster, cause it's the most accessible music we've probably ever written."

He is also working on a new character 'Jesse' in the style of his 'Fly' and 'Mephisto' personas, which explains his recent appearance in eyeliner.

Revealing that the glam look was actually influenced by Elvis, he added: "It's still in development! I started just messing with it a few weeks ago."

Bono's desire to move on with future projects may be a direct response to the lukewarm reception for the band's current single 'Get On Your Boots'.

"I was going off the song myself for a minute," said Bono of the album's lead single. "And then the Grammys really put me back on it. I really enjoyed performing it. It's gonna take a little longer to stick.

"It was never an obvious first single . . . it's an earnest love song. That's what's beautiful about it."

This article is taken from The Belfast Telegraph