To coincide with Ash Wednesday, U2 have surprise-released a new EP titled Days of Ash. The six-track EP includes one poem by Yehuda Amichai and five new songs by the band, one of which features Ed Sheeran and Taras Topolia, the Ukrainian singer who they performed with in a Kyiv bomb shelter in 2022. You can listen to it below.
U2 got back together over the past year to record what would become Days of Ash. Most of the EP’s songs are about real individuals whose lives were cut short, including Minneapolis mother Renée Good, Iranian schoolgirl Sarina Esmailzadeh, and Palestinian father and No Other Land documentary consultant Awdah Hathaleen. “Yours Eternally” will also get a short documentary directed by Ukrainian filmmaker Ilya Mikhaylus, which will be released next week on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The songs on Days of Ash are very different in mood and theme to the ones we’re going to put on our album later in the year,” Bono said in a press release. “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.”
U2 are also releasing a new Propaganda zine, the band’s long-running print series that they started back in 1986. The new issue, U2 – Days of Ash: Six Postcards From The Present… Wish We Weren’t Here, is a 52-page publication that includes song lyrics, notes from each member of U2, a Q&A with Bono, and exclusive interviews with ‘Yours Eternally’ film director Ilya Mikhaylus, film producer Pyotr Verzilov, and musician and soldier Taras Topolia. The Propaganda zine is available digitally and as a limited-edition print run.
U2’s as-yet-untitled new album will follow their 2023 full-length Songs of Surrender and is slated for release in late 2026. Last year, Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. each published their own statement on Israel’s ongoing starvation of the Gaza Strip. “Everyone has long been horrified by what is unfolding in Gaza – but the blocking of humanitarian aid and now plans for a military takeover of Gaza City has taken the conflict into uncharted territory,” they also wrote in a joint statement. “We are not experts in the politics of the region, but we want our audience to know where we each stand.”
Read about Achtung Baby at No. 118 in The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s.
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