U2 release new politically charged EP 'Days of Ash,' say new album will be out later this year

"It just depends on whether we're making music we feel deserves to be heard. I believe these new songs stand up to our best work. We talk a lot about when to release new tracks. You don't always know... the way the world is now feels like the right moment. Going way back to our earliest days, working with Amnesty or Greenpeace, we've never shied away from taking a position and sometimes that can get a bit messy, there's always some sort of blowback,"

"These EP tracks couldn't wait; these songs were impatient to be out in the world. They are songs of defiance and dismay, of lamentation. Songs of celebration will follow, we're working on those now... because for all the awfulness we see normalized daily on our small screens, there's nothing normal about these mad and maddening times and we need to stand up to them before we can go back to having faith in the future. And each other."

Days of Ash is an EP of new music from U2, their first release of new songs in nine years, containing five songs and a poem. The recordings include collaborations with Ed Sheeran, Jacknife Lee, and others. The tracks carry a political charge, expressing defiance, dismay, and lamentation while promising celebratory material on an upcoming album. The release links to a history of activism with Amnesty and Greenpeace and is framed as timely given current global events. An accompanying Propaganda zine issue includes interviews and lyrics, and a documentary short, Yours Eternally, will mark the fourth anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Read at BrooklynVegan