U2 Drops Carnaval de Luz on Island Records, Marking Their Sharpest LP in Decades
U2 are shedding the artistic weight of their recent past with Carnaval de Luz, an album arriving November 13th via Island Records. The record is their best since How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, which they released in 2004, effectively obliterating their many missteps since then, including No Line on the Horizon and the Apple giveaway.
The title means Carnival of Light in Spanish and Portuguese, and it is, in essence, the “Unos, dos, tres, catorce” spoken intro to Vertigo stretched out into an entire album. Bono, The Edge, Larry Mullen jnr and Adam Clayton sound unburdened, energized, and entirely over themselves.
Inside the Sound of the Band’s New Era
The record trades the heavy, self-serious grandiosity of their later-period work for immediate hooks and loose, rhythmic momentum. Guitarist The Edge truly drives this release, steering listeners from the guttural Zoo Station-esque intro on opener Go (Carnaval de Luz) to the brilliantly chugging riff that anchors La Reina.
That forward drive persists through the groove-heavy The Mirror Maker (Rosalía)—a tip of the hat to the Catalan pop star—and Superficiality, an energetic stomper that resurrects Bono’s often-overlooked falsetto high notes, a vocal peak last heard so clearly on 1993’s Lemon. Lyrically, the album flirts with signature Bonoisms—ornate, soaring phrases that occasionally risk total abstraction—yet the sheer velocity of the instrumentation keeps the record aloft.
From Studio Retrospective to Stadium Legacy
The record’s emotional centerpiece arrives with the bittersweet ballad The Greatest Show on Earth, featuring synthesizers by Brian Eno and production across the project helmed by Jacknife Lee. In the track, Bono compares a failing romance to the effort to keep a band on the road.
Ultimately, the project may exist primarily to fuel U2’s upcoming global tour, a prospect that has already caused a stir online due to its astronomical, Oasis-style admission fees. Yet unlike Dopamine Chamber, the portentous and inert LP that Fontaines DC, their fellow Dublin stadium-fillers, released last month, U2’s latest output retains a surprising lightness of touch.
The Closing Notes of a Long Road
Earlier momentum for this creative pivot arrived via a pair of EPs released earlier this year, Days of Ash and Easter Lily, signaling that the musicians in their 60s had successfully reconnected with the raw urgency of their formative years. That enduring energy shines brightly even during the project’s final, poignant track: a collaboration with Dolly Parton entitled Torn, captured just months before her passing and enriched by the graceful pedal steel playing of longtime band partner Daniel Lanois.
While moments of trademark pomposity and 1980s vocal yowls inevitably surface, Carnaval de Luz clears away the deadweight of U2’s own historical gravity. On this Carnival of Light, Irish rock’s crazy diamonds shine on brighter than ever.
