New album in the works while in NZ and Australia

[Earnie Shavers]

"Songs of Ascent" is/was the title of a combination of three things:

An idea - quick follow up/companion piece to No Line.

A concept - the (possibly singular) atmospheric/meditative sound and the theme of a pilgrims journey or whatever.

Material - foundation coming from tracks left over from No Line.

As time passes, each of those changes or changed. The reasons why, we don't know. The idea has a window attached to it. That probably shut conclusively heading into the last (northern) summer, but in reality probably shut at about the 12 month mark after the No Line release. For them, it might well have shut when No Line wasn't received as well as they expected. The concept would be tied pretty close to a similar window, because this is U2, and for them to release a highly thematic, singular mood or feel album, it probably would require the close cover of a larger, standard U2 album. Too much time passed for it, too. Where that leaves the material depends on many things. Which we have no clue about. Simple as that.

But - the three are not necessarily one and the same. The death of one does not on it's own equal the death of any and all of the others. That the idea and concept pass away, does not at all mean that ALL OF THE MATERIAL individually, has to be put on the shelf or be killed off as well. ONLY the combination dies.

Why they let the idea/concept go - we don't know. No Line reception? As they worked on it further it naturally evolved into something else? Hit a wall creatively? As they worked on a new more exciting creative spark, umm, sparked? Lord knows.

What happens with the material? Is it too No Line/Morocco linked to evolve? After a period, does it now just sound crap? Is it too weird/left field - Passengers 2: Journey to North Africa - to be evolved for a straight forward U2 album? Maybe. Probably for most of it, something like that is probably the case.

But the material does not have to move as a singular group. Why would that be the case? Once the idea and concept die, the material is, in a sense, released. Free as a bird.

U2girl - I don't get why you see SoA as a singular thing. Why it has to be moving all at once together. All lives, or all dies. Why it has to be EITHER one thing OR another. That's not how they work. The idea and concept of Songs of Ascent is dead. The material has an unknown future. SOME of it could EASILY evolve and see life in a different project/direction under a new producer. So sure, a wholly atmospheric, singularly thematic album produced by Eno/Lanois has likely long been scrapped as an idea and concept. But that in itself says nothing about the future of the material.

Chris Thomas was mentioned. They head in one direction with a producer. They scrap that direction. They scrap the producer. They take a new direction, with new producer/s. Some material gets carried forward, evolves with the new direction, the new producer, and makes it onto the next album. And at the same time, some of the material is left behind. Perhaps most of it.

They come out of No Line. They have some material. They have an idea. They have a concept. They have producers on it. They move forward. At some point, this starts to change. We don't know what happened in between in any sense - no idea what the evolution in both material and ideas and concepts is in between - but they emerge 18 months later with a new producer and a new direction. Probably a standard U2 album in the works. Not one thing or another, but a bit of a mix.

AND THERE IS NO REASON WHY SOME OF THE MATERIAL THAT WAS ONCE LEFT OVER FROM NO LINE, THAT WAS AT ONE STAGE 'PACKAGED' WITH AN IDEA AND CONCEPT AS 'SONGS OF ASCENT', COULD NOT HAVE MOVED FORWARD AS THE BAND MOVED FORWARD AND EVOLVED ALONGSIDE THEIR EVOLVING DIRECTIONAL DECISIONS, IDEAS, CONCEPTS.

It does not have to have moved forward together. Why would it?
It does not mean that Danger Mouse is now producing all of the previously Eno/Lanois produced material. Why on earth would it?
It does not mean that they have not decided to take a new direction, look for a new sound, go with a more commercially viable prospect. Why the fuck would it?

Sure, in all likelihood, most if not all of what they had post No Line has probably since been shelved. But there's no reason why it ALL had to be just because... because... it was at one point 'something else'.

 

[loudreamer]

Guys just accept that there is a bit of "truth" in both outlooks.
U2 is well known to change albums, songs, parts within songs and everything you want to name until the very last minute of the process of creating a new album, and their process takes long, so there are transformations around for every breaking song ...
That being said, IN MY OPINION Songs Of Ascent really seemed to be for real, and not because Bono's comments about it, but because IN MY OPINION they really were confident that NLOTH was the start of a new era and they truly believed that the material they had come up with Brian and Danny in those sessions was the direction they wanted to persue for the length of the 360 tour, so there seemed to be a natural logic in releasing NLOTH "meditative" little sister without the pressure of making U2 NEXT BIG ALBUM.

I actually think they still believe in that material, but decided to move ahead to make U2 NEXT BIG ALBUM...and "parts" of that material will be transformed for this new project, as always before.
I see no sense in U2 playing Every Waking Wave (suposedly the first single for SOA) if they don't have the intention of releasing it on the next album.

 

[loudreamer]

As always, great post Earnie.

 

[medley]

I don't think they have ever talked about working on several different "real" U2 projects in the past like they do this time, so based on this quite important fact alone we can't really compare what is happening now with what they previously did. And the reason why they talk about different projects rather than a bunch of songs is certainly a good indication that this time they want to make more cohesive/conceptual albums. By the way looking at the past to predict what U2 will do next is probably not a good idea as like you all know they have often done some very unexpected moves. Most of you are acting like they will necessarily keep the same way of thinking than the one they used in the 00s but that certainly not a given and right now most of the facts show that indeed it won't be the case. Of course many songs are going to be reworked but that doesn't mean that this time they are going to make another very diverse album. Their first ones didn't have so much diversity after all, this is a very recent approach.

 

[Niceman]

Sessions, um, sort of produce every studio album ever made.
So "just sessions"...doesn't really mean anything at all.

All due respect...this is not a difficult concept.
Do you remember when Adam said they had 10 songs way back after the Elevation tour had ended? He said they had enough for another album.
And then of course in 2002, this album was always 'just around the corner'.

Now pretend Adam said they were going to call it "Buttermilk" rather than just simply being a 'working' set of songs with no titles, which what U2 ALWAYS have. And then they continued to record and record and record...and HTDAAB shows up in 2004.

This SOA fascination is like asking "what happened to Buttermilk?".
It's called HTDAAB now...

"SOA" is/was essentially nothing more than a provisional title for an idea.
It will be called something else and that idea for a meditative album is likely long gone. So they will take that working set of songs, and use the best of them for new material in 2011, 2012 and so on.

Songs of Ascent is nothing more than "Adam".
Are you wondering what happened to the album "Adam"?
Because it's called Achtung Baby.

What about the Chris Thomas album? Do you believe it's sitting on a shelf somewhere?

It's like Jubilee or Full Metal Jacket which would later become Beautiful Day and Vertigo, respectively. Are you wondering what happened to Jubilee or FMJ? Bono called FMJ "the mother of all rock songs"...what happened to that long rumored song?

We will hear "Songs of Ascent" when those songs show up somewhere, probably on album #13. In other words, we can probably drop "Songs of Ascent" now.

maybe it's still the provisional title...but that doesn't mean it's separate project apart from Danger Mouse or a "club album"...I don't buy this alternate universe version of U2 (where they have two or more albums in the works...hahaha) anymore than I believe Bono still sings like he could in 1985. I absolutely believe there will be only the one album, the next album #13. All of this nonsense about three, four projects is just that....it will all end up under the same umbrella.

Why? Because I follow what the band do, rather than what they (or specifically Bono) say. They are unreliable when it comes to this sort of thing...and yet the past tells us that U2 like to get the best shit in place...because they end up not liking so much of the rest of it.

Think about the last 4 album sessions...think about how long they took.
They aren't producing 20, 30 album worthy songs in these sessions.
Any of them. So how could they find two albums of stuff in the same space it took them to find about 15 (including b-sides) for the HTDAAB period (2002-2004)? They're gonna have about 12 songs from all of this. It's nice to get excited...but all U2's prognostication (abotu their own work/timetables or even quality) always ends up being inflated.

That's okay, it's hard to guess when it's going to come out...they mean well.

That's great, but it isn't what THE BAND are saying. They continue to talk about having 3 or 4 separate projects.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

some people will just never get it. if bono came out tomorrow and said that he just recorded an album with the ghosts of john lennon and jimi hendrix, we will have some in here who will refuse to give up on the idea that a bono, ghost of lennon, ghost of hendrix album is due out ANY DAY NOW!

me? i just can't wait for Beard Shavings & Buttermilk, which i fully believe will be U2's next album, jointly produced by Rick Rubin & Chris Thomas. i can't wait. it's gonna fucking rock.

 

[nirniva]

Oh, come on. Too easy!

I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.

 

[medley]

some people will just never get it. if bono came out tomorrow and said that he just recorded an album with the ghosts of john lennon and jimi hendrix, we will have some in here who will refuse to give up on the idea that a bono, ghost of lennon, ghost of hendrix album is due out ANY DAY NOW!

me? i just can't wait for Beard Shavings & Buttermilk, which i fully believe will be U2's next album, jointly produced by Rick Rubin & Chris Thomas. i can't wait. it's gonna fucking rock.

Yeah, because speculations on Internet forums are so much better and reliable than what the actual band members are saying right ? Some people really will just never get it .

 

[SeeLoganRun]

some people will just never get it. if bono came out tomorrow and said that he just recorded an album with the ghosts of john lennon and jimi hendrix, we will have some in here who will refuse to give up on the idea that a bono, ghost of lennon, ghost of hendrix album is due out ANY DAY NOW!

Exactly this. In the nearly 20 years I've been following U2, I've learned to take everything Bono says about upcoming albums with a LOT of salt.
Bono says "the album we're working on is like nothing we've ever done before. It's like Joan of Arc playing for the Melvins with John Coltrane playing the drums from a time machine in the middle ages."
Then the album comes out and the edge plays tinga-tinga-tinga and Bono sings "oh-OHHHHH."
The album will comes when it comes. And it will sound like some variety of U2.

 

[Gonna Run 2 U]

After all the crap that comes out of Bonos mouth - I can guarantee that the next U2 album will do better commercially (in sales) for U2. I really think this album will have the "hit" that NLOTH lacked, at least.

 

[medley]

Exactly this. In the nearly 20 years I've been following U2, I've learned to take everything Bono says about upcoming albums with a LOT of salt.
Bono says "the album we're working on is like nothing we've ever done before. It's like Joan of Arc playing for the Melvins with John Coltrane playing the drums from a time machine in the middle ages."
Then the album comes out and the edge plays tinga-tinga-tinga and Bono sings "oh-OHHHHH."
The album will comes when it comes. And it will sound like some variety of U2.

Bono certainly is used to exaggerate but I don't think he ever really lied about this kind of things. When he says that they have 12 songs ready for one of their albums I also take it with a huge grain of salt but I won't question the fact that they are indeed right now working on those 3 different directions. Perhaps this will end with just one album with the best songs of each project, of course it can happen because a creative project can totally evolved until the last second obviously but I don't see any good reason right now to believe that this has more chance to end up this way than with different records.

 

[Steved1998]

I'm still waiting for the Solar sessions to be turned into an album

 

[U2girl]

You're right. They only make cohesive albums that have similar sounds throughout. Like how Mofo and Wake Up Dead Man sound totally like they came from the same session where they wanted to do dancy songs. Or Stand Up Comedy and Fez--sometimes I can't tell those two apart; they obviously came from the same session of world-inspired music from Morocco! And they never ever recycle things from old projects into new ones; that would be like mashing, oh, I dunno, 4 projects into one! And they don't work like that.

Same sessions. Different sounding songs. It happens all the time in music.

Shocking, isn't it ?

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

 

[beachball]

"Songs of Ascent" is/was the title of a combination of three things:

An idea - quick follow up/companion piece to No Line.

A concept - the (possibly singular) atmospheric/meditative sound and the theme of a pilgrims journey or whatever.

Material - foundation coming from tracks left over from No Line.

As time passes, each of those changes or changed. The reasons why, we don't know. The idea has a window attached to it. That probably shut conclusively heading into the last (northern) summer, but in reality probably shut at about the 12 month mark after the No Line release. For them, it might well have shut when No Line wasn't received as well as they expected. The concept would be tied pretty close to a similar window, because this is U2, and for them to release a highly thematic, singular mood or feel album, it probably would require the close cover of a larger, standard U2 album. Too much time passed for it, too. Where that leaves the material depends on many things. Which we have no clue about. Simple as that.

But - the three are not necessarily one and the same. The death of one does not on it's own equal the death of any and all of the others. That the idea and concept pass away, does not at all mean that ALL OF THE MATERIAL individually, has to be put on the shelf or be killed off as well. ONLY the combination dies.

Why they let the idea/concept go - we don't know. No Line reception? As they worked on it further it naturally evolved into something else? Hit a wall creatively? As they worked on a new more exciting creative spark, umm, sparked? Lord knows.

What happens with the material? Is it too No Line/Morocco linked to evolve? After a period, does it now just sound crap? Is it too weird/left field - Passengers 2: Journey to North Africa - to be evolved for a straight forward U2 album? Maybe. Probably for most of it, something like that is probably the case.

But the material does not have to move as a singular group. Why would that be the case? Once the idea and concept die, the material is, in a sense, released. Free as a bird.

U2girl - I don't get why you see SoA as a singular thing. Why it has to be moving all at once together. All lives, or all dies. Why it has to be EITHER one thing OR another. That's not how they work. The idea and concept of Songs of Ascent is dead. The material has an unknown future. SOME of it could EASILY evolve and see life in a different project/direction under a new producer. So sure, a wholly atmospheric, singularly thematic album produced by Eno/Lanois has likely long been scrapped as an idea and concept. But that in itself says nothing about the future of the material.

Chris Thomas was mentioned. They head in one direction with a producer. They scrap that direction. They scrap the producer. They take a new direction, with new producer/s. Some material gets carried forward, evolves with the new direction, the new producer, and makes it onto the next album. And at the same time, some of the material is left behind. Perhaps most of it.

They come out of No Line. They have some material. They have an idea. They have a concept. They have producers on it. They move forward. At some point, this starts to change. We don't know what happened in between in any sense - no idea what the evolution in both material and ideas and concepts is in between - but they emerge 18 months later with a new producer and a new direction. Probably a standard U2 album in the works. Not one thing or another, but a bit of a mix.

AND THERE IS NO REASON WHY SOME OF THE MATERIAL THAT WAS ONCE LEFT OVER FROM NO LINE, THAT WAS AT ONE STAGE 'PACKAGED' WITH AN IDEA AND CONCEPT AS 'SONGS OF ASCENT', COULD NOT HAVE MOVED FORWARD AS THE BAND MOVED FORWARD AND EVOLVED ALONGSIDE THEIR EVOLVING DIRECTIONAL DECISIONS, IDEAS, CONCEPTS.

It does not have to have moved forward together. Why would it?
It does not mean that Danger Mouse is now producing all of the previously Eno/Lanois produced material. Why on earth would it?
It does not mean that they have not decided to take a new direction, look for a new sound, go with a more commercially viable prospect. Why the fuck would it?

Sure, in all likelihood, most if not all of what they had post No Line has probably since been shelved. But there's no reason why it ALL had to be just because... because... it was at one point 'something else'.

Great post

But my question is, if we assume that SOA is a bit like Passengers II and EBW and North Star are the Miss Sarajevo and Your Blue Room, if you know what I mean, more structured songs and the rest ambient, meditative music. And if, like some people here assume, the concept of SOA was not dead yet, when they decided on which 12 songs they wanted to put on the Danger Mouse produced album, then if they moved EBW and North Star away from the rest of the material, the rest of the material could not stand on its own and would die.

This might have been a dilemma and the reason why they roadtested these songs. They were undecided!

If they used all new songs on the Danger Mouse album, they could still release SOA after that, because they need a big standard U2 album to cover it instead of NLOTH.

If, however, they added some SOA material to the new rock album, that would be the end of the rest of the material. Maybe just as well, because they may have lost interest or it was too tied to NLOTH. But they would just have to decide.

I think I mostly agree with you. But I do understand what U2girl is saying.

I am not the least bit annoyed by confusing news and the speculation here, I'm more fascinated by it and enjoy all the posts here.

Personally, at this time, I think some of the new songs, we have heard on tour were from SOA and they are now some of the 12 songs on the Danger Mouse produced album.

They haven't played them yet in New Zealand/Australia because they wanted to play One Tree Hill in New Zealand and wanted to pick up the audience afterwards with Pride and AOH. In Australia we heard Mercy and initially they were going for BFFTS.

Another reason might be, that they didn't want to reveal, how the songs sound now and don't want to play them as acoustic songs anymore.

But there is still time to play some of them on this tour.

 

[powerhour24]

We have no idea what the album will be or what will/did happen to SOA, let's just wait for the band to speak, or the music to speak for itself!!

 

[Niceman]

We have no idea what the album will be or what will/did happen to SOA, let's just wait for the band to speak, or the music to speak for itself!!

Ex-ACTLY!

 

[zoocarolina]

Some mysteries will be solved in May or probably in April, but it is very curious why we haven't seen EBW, North Star and Glastonbury.... Roadtesting to me means getting them ready for the new album and not delaying them for years right???? Or perhaps they were lead pigs and that was their see you later moment like Soon?? I think they're trying to confuse us by showing samples from all of these projects and then I would say atleast one of these (or Mercy) is on the next album, my best bet is atleast Mercy, very interesting times for U2 fans and we are unchartered territory for this band, they're usually a lot more predictable, those wiley Irish guys!

 

[dan_smee]

Some mysteries will be solved in May or probably in April, but it is very curious why we haven't seen EBW, North Star and Glastonbury.... Roadtesting to me means getting them ready for the new album and not delaying them for years right???? Or perhaps they were lead pigs and that was their see you later moment like Soon?? I think they're trying to confuse us by showing samples from all of these projects and then I would say atleast one of these (or Mercy) is on the next album, my best bet is atleast Mercy, very interesting times for U2 fans and we are unchartered territory for this band, they're usually a lot more predictable, those wiley Irish guys!

The fact that they appear to have stopped with the others means they are probably happy with where they are, and they are just playing the one they enjoy the most. In all realism, they can't play many unreleased songs at a show, and I think it indicates that they ironed out the wrinkles in the songs going on feedback at shows and online, and have finished recording them

 

[Mountain Dew Ma]

I tend to agree with Dan.

Mercy, while previously unreleased before Wide awake in Europe, was still known to the hardcore fanbase. It's a treat to the real nutso fans like us, and still sort of "unreleased." I do think they're done road-testing North star, Glastonbury and Every breaking wave.

 

[LPU2]

The fact that they appear to have stopped with the others means they are probably happy with where they are, and they are just playing the one they enjoy the most. In all realism, they can't play many unreleased songs at a show, and I think it indicates that they ironed out the wrinkles in the songs going on feedback at shows and online, and have finished recording them

I think that's probably it. I wouldn't imagine it's a very good idea to play too many songs people haven't heard. You risk losing the connection with your audience.

 

[powerhour24]

Or they have separated the songs into different projects, after all we know the DM material was coming together during the European tour, and EBW was only played over a period of two weeks completely stripped down, that to me could say they'd "perfected" and wanted to keep it under wraps, or they had separated it from their next album project...

uh oh, I'm feeding into the speculation/dissection I just advised against!

 

[shart1780]

I would be happy if every one of these songs only played live (except maybe EBW) were never released on an album because, when you think about it, none of them are particularly adventurous or extremely interesting.

 

[Mountain Dew Ma]

We don't really know how interesting they are aside from the melody and chord structure. We have zero idea what the actual musical bed to either North Star or Every Breaking Wave would sound like.

 

[powerhour24]

I'm interested to see NS and EBW on an album, and certainly would have loved a closer-to-2004 Mercy on an album, but I pray that BFFTS never appears on a U2 album now that it is visibly associated with Turn Off The Dark that would just be tacky, if they release it as a one-off single, that would be just fine.

 

[the tourist]

Same sessions. Different sounding songs. It happens all the time in music.

Shocking, isn't it ?

You mean like Wake Up Dead Man, which was a leftover from Achtung Baby? Or Stand Up Comedy, which sounds frighteningly like something that Rubin would've been involved with?

 

[roy]

I would be happy if every one of these songs only played live (except maybe EBW) were never released on an album because, when you think about it, none of them are particularly adventurous or extremely interesting.

"When you think about it"

 

[U2girl]

You mean like Wake Up Dead Man, which was a leftover from Achtung Baby? Or Stand Up Comedy, which sounds frighteningly like something that Rubin would've been involved with?

The Pop version of WUDM was very different to AB version.

And Stand up comedy isn't Rubin.

 

[atomicman]

I bet my live that one more unreleased song gets played on the Australien leg....

 

[coolian2]

I bet my live that one more unreleased song gets played on the Australien leg....

if they don't pull out boy falls from the sky i'll honestly give it up. that song is ready as of last week. it's massive.