U2’s The Edge has opened up about why the band felt the urgency to surprise-release their new six-song EP ‘Easter Lily’ on Good Friday.
Earlier today (April 3), the Irish rock giants dropped the EP without fanfare, a follow-on from February’s ‘Days Of Ash’ EP, which was similarly released to coincide with a seasonal religious milestone, Ash Wednesday.
The songs on ‘Easter Lily’ have been described as “much more reflective” than those on the “defiant” and politically-charged ‘Days Of Ash’, with these tracks “emerging from a more personal, private place that some may retreat to in such times”.
The band have long been thought to be working in the studio on their 15th album, but in a new digital e-zine edition of their long-running Propaganda fanzine, The Edge has shed light on why they ultimately decided to release this group of songs as a separate project.
“We wrote some songs meant for our album but they started to assert themselves in some unexpected ways, demanding special attention,” he explained. “Their own devotional world, suggesting they didn’t feel part of our album.”
“So we folded … agreed to their timeline … which was Easter … 40 days after Ash Wednesday … the songs are the boss, you have to do what they say or they’ll abandon you for someone else.”
Expanding on the two EPs arriving on key Christian festive days, he added: “There’s no doubt this collection of songs have a kind of seasonal bent but I wouldn’t get too carried awa with the religious calendar here. The point is there are ceremonies and rituals some of us are missing in this most material of times.”
Elsewhere in the 54-page Propaganda e-zine, Bono shares a conversation with the Franciscan friar Richard Rohr, The Edge explores the inspiration behind each of the six new tracks, Adam Clayton discusses the EP’s artwork and its connection to recovery and producer Jacknife Lee gives an insight into the recording process. Check it all out here.
In his interview, Jacknife Lee, who has worked with U2 since 2004’s ‘How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb’, said that after the release of ‘Days Of Ash’, the band realised that “the album is not the work, for now. The work is about reacting to events in real time. Rock ‘n’ roll doesn’t do that often anymore.”
“So about two weeks ahead of Easter, the band said: ‘If we’re doing a record about the external world at the beginning of Lent, when you do fasting and contemplation and all those things, let’s put an Easter EP out on Good Friday that is more about the internal response to things’. We were discussing faith and hope so we leaned into that.”
Propaganda has been running since 1986 and was inspired by the “punk-era DIY zine culture that embraced attitude, ideas and dialogue”.
As for their next full-length album, as far back as 2024, The Edge said that it would not be “a straight-up rock thing”, while last summer, Bono shared that he was “ready for the future” with U2, with the band having written “25 great songs”. Earlier this year while discussing the writing process, the frontman said that U2 were overcoming the past to make “the sound of the future”.
When asked by US chat show host Jimmy Kimmel how progress on new music – which will mark the follow-up to 2017’s ‘Songs Of Experience’ – was shaping up, Bono responded: “We’ve been in the studio and you’ve sometimes got to deal with the past to get to the present, in order to make the sound of the future. That’s what we want to do.”
He continued: “It’s the sound of four men, who feel like their lives depend on it. I remind them, they do. Nobody needs a new U2 album unless it’s an extraordinary one. I’m feeling very strong about it.”
