Bono on new U2 album: “We’ve been recording. And it sounds like future to me”

Bono has updated fans on the upcoming as-yet-titled studio album by U2 – their follow-up to 2017’s ‘Songs Of Experience’.

• READ MORE: ‘Bono: Stories of Surrender’ review: U2 frontman’s stunning stage show becomes unmissable film

While at Cannes Film Festival to promote his upcoming one-man feature Bono: Stories of Surrender – due to stream on Apple TV+ on May 30 – the Irish rock star spoke with Rolling Stone about new music by the band.

Bono answered cryptically: “Nostalgia is not to be tolerated for too long, but sometimes you’ve got to deal with the past in order to get to the future and to the present. To get back to now is our desire. Get back to this moment we’re in.”

He then confirmed that the band has been recording, “and it sounds like future to me,” he said. “We had to go through some stuff, and we’re at the other end of it.”

Last November, U2 guitarist The Edge confirmed that drummer Larry Mullen Jr. – who had to sit out of the band’s historic Las Vegas Sphere residency due to injury and recovering from surgery – has been back in the studio with them.

“We’ve been playing in the room together, the four of us,” Bono told Rolling Stone.

“And I can tell you [Mullen Jr.] is completely through whatever storm of injury he’s been through. His playing is at its most innovative. He’s just all about the band. He doesn’t want to talk about anything else, which is kind of amazing.”

Bono added: “By the way, being a band in a room where each individual musician has a role that’s singular and collective is so rare because music is assembled these days.”

“And even some of our music we have assembled, and we’ll do that again, but to try and capture a moment of a rock & roll band in full flight is at the heart of this record that we’re making that we’ve recorded, but we are not finished.”

Prior to Bono’s comments, The Edge had primarily been U2’s spokesperson for providing fans with updates, although Bono told Zane Lowe in 2023 that, by then, Edge had about “100 in the bag. I have about 20… but [bassist] Adam [Clayton]’s got something to contribute.”

Last November, The Edge told Rolling Stone that the new album will not be “a straight-up rock thing”. In January, he said new U2 music will arrive “very soon”.

In NME’s four-star review of Bono: Stories Of Surrender, Damian Jones wrote: “Andrew Dominik’s Apple TV+ documentary, shot at New York City’s Beacon Theatre, is billed as a “vivid reimagining” of the show and in many ways it is.”

“For one thing, it’s a lot more intimate with much of the film comprising close-up shots of Bono as he regales the audience with tales of his father, wife, U2 and (unexpectedly) Italian opera legend Pavarotti.”

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