U2 Announce Carnaval de Luz Album, Out November 13

Exactly fifty years ago, on September 25, 1976, four teenagers gathered in the Mullen family’s kitchen in Dublin for their first rehearsal together. They got there because of a handwritten note that drummer Larry Mullen Jr. had pinned to the noticeboard at Mount Temple school in north Dublin a week earlier: a drummer looking for musicians to start a band. The band has been called U2 ever since, and on September 24, on the eve of that fiftieth anniversary, they announced their sixteenth studio album, “Carnaval de Luz,” their first with new songs in nine years.

The album is out November 13 and has twelve tracks, produced by Garret “Jacknife” Lee, who has worked with the band since “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.” The same day the album was announced, U2 released its second single, “Silencio,” with additional production by Ryan Tedder. The album’s first song, “Street of Dreams,” came out back on July 7, while the video for “Silencio” was shot in Mexico City and directed by the duo of Pascual Gutierrez and Raul Sanchez, known together as Cliqua.

An Album About Carnival, Lent, and Easter

“Carnaval de Luz” did not come out of nowhere. Earlier this year U2 surprise released two EPs, “Days of Ash” and “Easter Lily,” recorded during the same sessions as the album. Those two releases follow the church calendar, Lent and Easter renewal, and the new album, by that same calendar, comes before them: carnival is a celebration of the body before Lent begins. With twelve songs on the album and six on each EP, the band has released twenty four new songs in total in its fiftieth year. Bassist Adam Clayton told Rolling Stone it is an extraordinary collection of songs, the culmination of work all four members have put in over the last fifty years.

Who Are the Album’s Guest Collaborators?

The list of collaborators on “Carnaval de Luz” is unusually long for a band that rarely lets outsiders into its sound. Brian Eno co-wrote three songs and plays synthesizers, including on the opening track, “Go (Carnaval de Luz).” Martin Garrix worked on the song “Glorify,” and Daniel Lanois plays pedal steel guitar on the closing track, “Torn.” The full tracklist is as follows:

• Go (Carnaval De Luz)
• La Reina
• Street Of Dreams
• The Mirror Maker (Rosalía)
• Superficiality
• If The World Is At War We Better Not Be
• Silencio
• The Greatest Show On Earth
• Glorify
• Midnight Sunshine
• Can’t Stop Us Now
• Torn (featuring Dolly Parton)

Guitarist The Edge described the album’s sound to Rolling Stone like this:

This is a statement of intent. Whatever you thought you were going to hear when you put on a new U2 album, this isn’t it.

Dolly Parton’s Final Vocal Performance

The closing track, “Torn,” is a duet between Bono and Dolly Parton, and also her last recorded vocal performance, cut before she died last month. The song was written together by Parton, Jonny McDaid and the band itself. In the statement announcing the album, Bono spoke in the voice of a carnival barker:

Step right up, step right up, step right up! Bring your purple socks, your broken hearts, your naivety tinted rose colored… to marvel in the hall of mirrors. There will be loud guitars, deep bass, ecstatic rhythms, and yes, the odd silver tear will make an appearance.

Mullen’s Return, and an Album Still Without Tour Dates

Behind the whole story is also the personal drama of drummer Larry Mullen Jr., who returned to the studio after a serious neck injury. He described that period to Rolling Stone:

We hadn’t been together in the same room, in a studio setting, for a long time. I couldn’t play. I thought I would never play again. So there was renewed energy in the studio when we got back.

Producer Lee, describing the work on the record, said that in all his years working with bands and artists he had never seen anyone work so hard, with so much intensity and joy.

The band’s previous album, “Songs of Experience,” came out in 2017, while “Songs of Surrender,” a collection of new recordings of older songs, was released in 2023. “Carnaval de Luz” will come out in several formats: limited deluxe box sets on vinyl and CD, colored vinyl, standard CD and vinyl, and digitally. No tour dates have been announced yet.