U2 - Songs Of Innocence

Songs Of Innocence is the thirteenth studio album by Irish rock band U2, originally released in September 2014 by Island Records.

No other rock band does rebirth like U2. No other band believes it needs rebirth more and so often. But even by the standards of transformation on 1987's The Joshua Tree and 1991's Achtung! Baby, Songs Of Innocence - U2's first studio album in five years - is a triumph of dynamic, focused renaissance, Tracks of straightforward rapture about the life-saving joys of music, drawing on U2's long palette of influences and investigations of post-punk rock, industrial electronics and contemporary dance music.

Songs Of Innocence is aptly named, after William Blake's 1789 collection of poems about man's perpetually great age of discovery – childhood.

Where the U2 of the '90s looked forward, the 2014 U2 were looking back, aware of a legacy that includes decades of arena-filling anthems, the deliberate reinvention of Achtung Baby, and their initial inspiration from the great spark of punk rock.

On Songs Of Innocence U2 have taken the long way 'round to metamorphosis: turning back and inward, for the first time on a whole record, to their lives and learning as boys on the way to uncertain manhood (and their band) in Dublin.

Bono's lyrics are striking in their specific, personal history. In "Cedarwood Road", named after a street where he lived, he remembers the fear and unrequited anger that drove him to music and to be heard – and which won't go away. "Raised By Wolves" is a tension of metronome-like groove and real-life carnage based on a series of car bombs that bloodied Dublin one night in the Seventies.

In "Iris (Hold Me Close)", Bono sings to his mother, who died when he was 14, through a tangle of fondness and still-desperate yearning, in outbreaks of dreamy neo-operatic ascension over a creamy sea of keyboards and Clayton's dignified-disco bass figure.

For U2, and Bono in particular, the first step on the road out of Dublin was the sound of a voice, and they name it in the opening track, "The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)". U2 have always been open in their gratitude to New York punk and the Ramones in particular, and this homage to unlikely heroism – that kid you least expect to take on the world and win – is suitable honour. U2 also pay due diligence to the Clash in "This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now", dedicated to Joe Strummer.

These are the oldest stories in rock & roll. Adolescent restlessness; traumatic loss; the revelation of rescue hiding in a great chorus or power chord. But Songs Of Innocence is the first time U2 have told their own tales so directly, with the strengths and expression they have accumulated as songwriters and record-makers.

Check out the tracks: “The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)”; “Every Breaking Wave” and “Song For Someone”.

This Limited Edition double LP housed in a gatefold sleeve is pressed in Europe on white vinyl with Side D at 45 RPM.