Recently in Album News Category

by TripleM Sydney

U2's record label over in the UK, Mercury Records, has put the Irish supergroup in their release schedule for 2013.

Now we'll just add caution that when push comes to shove, U2 are the ones who decide when they're ready to put out a new album, not the record company, but it's looking good for next year.

The band have been working their arses off in the studio with a number of producers including Danger Mouse and Will.I.Am, resulting in material which U2 insider Gavin Friday has described as "really very, very different".

In an interview with RTE Radio One's Weekend On One program in the UK just last weekend, Gavin said: "I've heard a bit of... Danger Mouse is producing it, so it's quite different."

Starpulse.com

For any fan of U2, the new double-disc live album U22, from the record-breaking U2360° tour, is something really special. This exclusive U2 Fan Club release features 22 live tracks that were voted on by fans, all recorded during the two year, 110 show tour. What's really unusual with this release is that the tracks selected are not just the classic U2 hits you might expect but fan favorites like 'Bad', 'Ultra Violet', 'Moment of Surrender' and 'Zooropa.'

Another innovation with the release of U22 is the beautiful packaging. The 2-disc set comes in an LP-sized book of breathtaking photos from the tour, which as you probably know featured a unique looking 'Claw' stage set-up for 360° viewing. The book also comes with liner notes talking through the tracks written by bassist Adam Clayton.

Pretty much since the early part of promotion for the "No Line On The Horizon" album, U2 has hinted that there's a wealth of material that could result in multiple projects, but so far there's been no mention of an actual release date.

However, the band's U.K. label Mercury Records let it slip that the group is on their release schedule for 2013. The U.K.'s Music Week reported the news in a pair of tweets. The first stated, "New Metallica, U2, Arcade Fire and Noah And The Whale album coming next year, Mercury Records has confirmed."

The second tweet added a quote for Mercury's U.K. label chief Jason Iley, who stated, "2013 could be one of the best years Mercury's ever had." Iley has a long-running relationship with U2, and lured them over to Mercury after the split with Island Records several years ago.

by Chad Childers, UltimateClassicRock.com

U2 fan club members have recently begun getting the brand new 'U22′ live albums, which they helped shape, in the mail. The group asked fans to choose their favorite tracks performed during the band's recent U2360° tour, and the results yielded this new two-disc release, which spans their entire career.

Over a three-month period, subscribers had a chance to listen to 46 songs from the run, then select their favorite 22 to go on the record. After the songs were chosen, the band sequenced and mastered the release with their production team. Now finalized, the album will be the band's annual one-off special edition release for subscribers of their U2.com fan club.

The U2 360 trek began in Barcelona in June 2009 and continued through a July finale last year in Canada. In all, over seven million fans in 30 countries visited the band's 110 performances.

But singer says band have to do 'something very special' on next album...

NME

U2's Bono has claimed that the band's recent recording sessions have been their best "since 1979".

Speaking on Irish TV programme The Late Late Show, the frontman insisted that he and his bandmates had been enjoying a productive streak in the studio, but also said that they were aware they needed to produce "something very special" on their next LP.

Previously, the singer admitted that U2's last album, 2009's 'No Line On The Horizon', hadn't contained as many hit singles as their previous efforts and said that they needed to write some big-selling tunes in order to survive.

By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY

HOLLYWOOD - Bono and The Edge are enjoying vodka martinis at the inveterate Musso & Frank Grill, a celebrated time capsule of bygone Hollywood and the former haunt of Charlie Chaplin, Raymond Chandler and Rudolph Valentino. The dark booth seems a fitting spot for the singer and guitarist to ponder U2's newest project: a dusky catalog jewel.

Reissuing 1991's Achtung Baby with a new companion documentary wasn't an easy decision for a forward-looking band averse to rearview glances, says Edge, 50. "How big a deal do we make of an anniversary when we're in the middle of what we're doing now? We had a hard time figuring that out. We're not a heritage act. We're still very active. But this record was so pivotal that we felt it was OK to revisit it."

Bono: 'We'd be very pleased to end on 'No Line on the Horizon''

By Brian Hiatt, Rolling Stone

Ask Bono a tough question and you might get a tougher answer. U2 are about to release their most expansive reissue project yet, for 1991's Achtung Baby - the album where they traded in earnest uplift for funk, noise, sex, irony and self-doubt. So how does this lavish look back square with the band's old lyric "You glorify the past when the future dries up"?

"I'm not so sure the future hasn't dried up," says Bono, who's been irritating his bandmates lately by publicly questioning U2's relevance - despite the fact that they just finished the highest-grossing tour of all time. "The band are like, 'Will you shut up about being irrelevant?'" he says. But Bono can't help himself - even though U2 have been in and out of the studio with various producers recently, he raises the possibility that the band may have released its final album. "We'd be very pleased to end on No Line on the Horizon," he says, before acknowledging the unlikelihood of that scenario: "I doubt that."

'Achtung Baby' was the making of U2. As the album is rereleased after 20 years, alongside a film about the band, Bono and Edge recall the turmoil that surrounded the recording and talk about their future.

Brian Boyd, Irish Times

IT'S WHEN THREE glasses are raised to toast "12-step programmes" that you realise perhaps one too many cocktails has been taken. It's a bar in Toronto and the caipirinhas were Bono's idea, with Edge not slow to get his round in. "If we don't come up with a very good reason to make a new album, we should just f*** off," says Bono. "Why does anyone need a new U2 album?"

For the first time in their 35-year career the notoriously "faster, stronger, higher" band have put the brakes on and taken a long look in the rear-view mirror. A new film about the band, From the Sky Down , documents how their huge success in the 1980s provoked a bout of self-loathing and almost broke up the band as they struggled to stay true to their vision of a band forged in the white heat of Dublin's punk/new wave movement.

By Marc Hogan, Spin

Jack White knew what he was doing when he took on "Love Is Blindness" as part of Q Magazine's 20th-anniversary tribute to U2's soon-to-be-reissued Achtung Baby. While the Irish arena rockers are probably best known for their windswept anthems, the Achtung Baby finale isn't too far from White's tastes in its original version: There's a "The House of the Rising Sun"-like chord progression, peals of organ, streaks of guitar fuzz, and a particularly emotion-wracked Bono vocal.

For this cover, the White Stripes frontman goes back to the song's down-and-dirty blues-rock heritage, howling the pained lyrics as if he were on a lost Nuggets cut. Even better than the real thing? Have a listen to the BBC Radio 2-premiered track below -- and forever banish that OMG-WTF Insane Clown Posse collabo from your brain cells (via Interference as first pointed out by Consequence of Sound).

Jack White, "Love Is Blindness" (U2 Cover)

Bono also admits band's new doc 'From The Sky Down' is 'excruciating' to watch

NME

Jack White, Depeche Mode, Patti Smith and Damien Rice have been lined up to cover U2 on a 20th anniversary tribute to the Irish band's 1991 LP 'Achtung Baby'.

The quartet have covered 'Love Is Blindness', 'So Cruel', 'Until The End Of The World' and 'One' respectively on the album, which has been commissioned by Q magazine.

Frontman Bono revealed details of the LP during a press conference to promote new U2 documentary From The Sky Down', which is opening the Toronto International Film Festival.