U2 new album pushed back to 2009

As is usually the case, the band are keeping us waiting just a little while longer than we hoped.

Talking just yesterday on U2.com, Bono said that while he is “itching to get the music out” he says “it’s going to be early 2009 when we first get to hear the songs.”

‘I’m always the one who underestimates how easy it is to simply ‘put out the songs now’, if it was just up to me they’d be out already! But early next year people will be able to start hearing what we’ve been doing. We want 2009 to be our year, so we’re going to start making an impression very early on …’

“We’ve hit a rich songwriting vein”

While we might all be a little disappointed at he delay, the way the band are talking it sounds like the album will be well worth the wait (if we didn’t already know that).

‘We’ve hit a rich songwriting vein,’ Bono explains. ‘It gets a bit dark down here but looks like we’ve found diamonds not coal. I thought a while back we might have the album wrapped by now, but why come up above ground now if there’s more priceless stuff to be found?

‘We know we have to emerge soon but we also know that people don’t want another U2 album unless it is our best ever album. It has to be our most innovative, our most challenging … or what’s the point ?’

Another departure

The Boys have no doubts that it will be as important a release for U2 as any. ‘It’s a brand new chapter for us, and everyone we’ve played the tracks to has said that musically it feels like another departure.

‘The last two records were very personal, with a kind of three piece at their heart, the primary colours of rock – bass, guitars and drum. But what we’re about now is of the same order as the transition that took us from The Joshua Tree to Achtung Baby.’