U2 will release its first full-length album in nine years, "Carnaval De Luz," on Nov. 12, Interscope Records announced Thursday. The 12-track record closes with "Torn," a duet with Dolly Parton that a release calls "what has sadly turned out to be her last recorded vocal performance," recorded in June.
"Torn" was co-written by U2, Parton and Johnny McDaid, with pedal steel guitar contributed by Daniel Lanois. Bono told Rolling Stone the song came together after he tried to recruit Parton for an Irish folk-themed side project. "That's a little too Irish for me," he recalled her saying of his demos, before she offered up her own song: "I got this song. It's called 'Torn,' and do you wanna see where you can take it somewhere else, maybe?" Bono and McDaid then reworked the lyrics into a story about a mother watching her family splinter, and Parton agreed to sing the new version.
Bono described the recording session in the same Rolling Stone piece: "When she got ill, she got out of her bed to sing this song. And you can hear that. And I can't even listen to it now… She sang her heart out, and I cannot believe that's an 80-year-old woman."
The album is being previewed with the new single "Silencio," a track described in a release as a "2mins 35second homage to early surf-punk insolence," with additional production from Ryan Tedder. Its music video was shot in Mexico City and directed by Cliqua, the duo of Pasqual Gutiérrez and Raúl "RJ" Sanchez. An earlier single, "Street of Dreams," came out in July before the album was officially announced.
Produced by longtime collaborator Jacknife Lee, "Carnaval De Luz" was described as a 12-song set exploring spirituality, friendship, freedom and endurance against "dark, encroaching forces." Brian Eno contributed co-writing and synthesizer work on "Go (Carnaval De Luz)," "The Greatest Show on Earth" and "Can't Stop Us Now," while Martin Garrix co-wrote "Glorify." The cover art shows the band walking in a line along the shore, an image evoking "Abbey Beach."
Bono offered a characteristically theatrical statement: "Roll up, roll up, roll up! Bring your purple socks, your broken hearts, your rose-tinted naivety… oh be amazed in the hall of mirrors. There will be loud guitars, deep bass, some ecstatic rhythms and, yes, some silver tears will make an appearance!" He continued, "'Cause in the near distance just outside our carnival of light there are all kinds of creatures… the same imagination that brings us our creativity can also bring us monsters. So we make the drums louder. We build a bigger fire. We make our stories wilder and funnier. We make the melodies sweeter and the songs, they better shine, because if the world is in darkness we better not be."
The Edge kept his comment brief: "It's a messy, provocative, sacred collection of songs — and features the first-ever use of flat-wound strings on a U2 recording. Just saying."
The album follows two surprise digital EPs, "Days of Ash" and "Easter Lily," each carrying six songs and released for Ash Wednesday and Easter, respectively, with no songs overlapping the new album. Counting those releases, U2 will have put out 24 songs within a calendar year by the time "Carnaval De Luz" arrives — coinciding with the band's 50th anniversary.
The full tracklist is: "Go (Carnaval De Luz)," "La Reina," "Street Of Dreams," "The Mirror Maker" (featuring 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" and "Torn" (featuring Dolly Parton).
Photo: P Douglas Middlemiss, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
