U2, Bono talks about the EP “Days Of Ash” and the new album: “Not just ashes, it'll be a carnival”

“We need a bit of carnival, there can't only be ashes”. That's how Bono introduces the next U2 album in the pages of Propaganda, the fanzine born in 1986 and now back in digital form to coincide with the release, which happened yesterday – Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent – of the EP "Days Of Ash". The issue collects lyrics, notes and interviews with the band members and with some of the figures involved in the project, such as director Ilya Mikhaylus, who made the video for "Yours Eternally".

The new record, due out by the end of the year, will head in a different direction from the EP, Bono explains. "The album we're working on has a different narrative, a more joyful mood. A carnival." There are 25 unreleased tracks on the table: the ones destined for the album will have a more celebratory tone, less marked by the urgency and unease running through "Days Of Ash". "The songs on the EP are a reaction to the anxieties of these times. They might irritate or annoy some parties, but describing the world around us is part of U2's job."

In detail, "Yours Eternally" is built like a letter from the Ukrainian front. The inspiration comes from meeting Taras Topolia, frontman of Antytila, whom Bono met after an invitation from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, shortly after the Russian invasion. Bono says he got his number from Ed Sheeran: "When I called him he hung up on me. He was at the front, not in the mood to talk about music." Sheeran features on the track and, according to Bono, retains the energy of a young newcomer with a bit more lightness.

"American Obituary" is dedicated to Renee Nicole Macklin Good, a mother of three shot dead in broad daylight. The song's rhythm looks to Bob Dylan's "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)", while the political commentary is blunt: "Is it just me, or is Ice starting to look like a paramilitary force, like the very gangs it claims to be fighting?" Bono speaks of a polarized climate, with conservative friends worried about the far right and Democrats alarmed by the far left, and calls for a "radical centre" capable of mediating and solving problems.

In "The Tears of Things" the focus shifts to Italy, between Michelangelo's "David" and the 1938 visit in which Benito Mussolini accompanied Adolf Hitler among the masterpieces of the Renaissance. "The David was ten minutes away. Maybe Hitler saw it. We don't know, but for a songwriter it's a narrative possibility." In the same passage Bono argues that the Christian Church must acknowledge its silence during the Holocaust. "Song Of The Future" pays tribute to the Iranian schoolgirls in revolt and takes as its symbolic figure Sarina Esmailzadeh, who took to the streets after the killing of Jina Mahsa Amini and later died from the violence she suffered. "One Life At A Time", finally, draws on the story of Awdah, a Palestinian activist and consultant on the documentary "No Other Land", killed in the West Bank by an Israeli extremist.

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