Recently in the Album News Category

By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY

HOLLYWOOD - Bono and The Edge are enjoying vodka martinis at the inveterate Musso & Frank Grill, a celebrated time capsule of bygone Hollywood and the former haunt of Charlie Chaplin, Raymond Chandler and Rudolph Valentino. The dark booth seems a fitting spot for the singer and guitarist to ponder U2's newest project: a dusky catalog jewel.

Reissuing 1991's Achtung Baby with a new companion documentary wasn't an easy decision for a forward-looking band averse to rearview glances, says Edge, 50. "How big a deal do we make of an anniversary when we're in the middle of what we're doing now? We had a hard time figuring that out. We're not a heritage act. We're still very active. But this record was so pivotal that we felt it was OK to revisit it."

Bono: 'We'd be very pleased to end on 'No Line on the Horizon''

By Brian Hiatt, Rolling Stone

Ask Bono a tough question and you might get a tougher answer. U2 are about to release their most expansive reissue project yet, for 1991's Achtung Baby - the album where they traded in earnest uplift for funk, noise, sex, irony and self-doubt. So how does this lavish look back square with the band's old lyric "You glorify the past when the future dries up"?

"I'm not so sure the future hasn't dried up," says Bono, who's been irritating his bandmates lately by publicly questioning U2's relevance - despite the fact that they just finished the highest-grossing tour of all time. "The band are like, 'Will you shut up about being irrelevant?'" he says. But Bono can't help himself - even though U2 have been in and out of the studio with various producers recently, he raises the possibility that the band may have released its final album. "We'd be very pleased to end on No Line on the Horizon," he says, before acknowledging the unlikelihood of that scenario: "I doubt that."

'Achtung Baby' was the making of U2. As the album is rereleased after 20 years, alongside a film about the band, Bono and Edge recall the turmoil that surrounded the recording and talk about their future.

Brian Boyd, Irish Times

IT'S WHEN THREE glasses are raised to toast "12-step programmes" that you realise perhaps one too many cocktails has been taken. It's a bar in Toronto and the caipirinhas were Bono's idea, with Edge not slow to get his round in. "If we don't come up with a very good reason to make a new album, we should just f*** off," says Bono. "Why does anyone need a new U2 album?"

For the first time in their 35-year career the notoriously "faster, stronger, higher" band have put the brakes on and taken a long look in the rear-view mirror. A new film about the band, From the Sky Down , documents how their huge success in the 1980s provoked a bout of self-loathing and almost broke up the band as they struggled to stay true to their vision of a band forged in the white heat of Dublin's punk/new wave movement.

By Marc Hogan, Spin

Jack White knew what he was doing when he took on "Love Is Blindness" as part of Q Magazine's 20th-anniversary tribute to U2's soon-to-be-reissued Achtung Baby. While the Irish arena rockers are probably best known for their windswept anthems, the Achtung Baby finale isn't too far from White's tastes in its original version: There's a "The House of the Rising Sun"-like chord progression, peals of organ, streaks of guitar fuzz, and a particularly emotion-wracked Bono vocal.

For this cover, the White Stripes frontman goes back to the song's down-and-dirty blues-rock heritage, howling the pained lyrics as if he were on a lost Nuggets cut. Even better than the real thing? Have a listen to the BBC Radio 2-premiered track below -- and forever banish that OMG-WTF Insane Clown Posse collabo from your brain cells (via Interference as first pointed out by Consequence of Sound).

Jack White, "Love Is Blindness" (U2 Cover)

Bono also admits band's new doc 'From The Sky Down' is 'excruciating' to watch

NME

Jack White, Depeche Mode, Patti Smith and Damien Rice have been lined up to cover U2 on a 20th anniversary tribute to the Irish band's 1991 LP 'Achtung Baby'.

The quartet have covered 'Love Is Blindness', 'So Cruel', 'Until The End Of The World' and 'One' respectively on the album, which has been commissioned by Q magazine.

Frontman Bono revealed details of the LP during a press conference to promote new U2 documentary From The Sky Down', which is opening the Toronto International Film Festival.

Elaborate box set will include unreleased music and footage

By Matthew Perpetua, Rolling Stone

U2 have released details of their forthcoming 20th anniversary reissue of Achtung Baby, due out later this year. The set will come in multiple formats, aimed at different types of U2 fans. "If you pile a lot of extra material and packaging and design work into a super-duper box set, there are people who will pay quite a lot for it, so you can budget it at a very high level and pump up the value," band manager Paul McGuinness told Rolling Stone earlier this year.

Bryan Wawzenek, Gibson.com

U2's Achtung Baby marks its 20th anniversary this year and the Irish rockers are planning to release a deluxe edition of the album to celebrate. The 1991 album also will be paired with U2's 1993 release, Zooropa, in a special edition box set, according to Rolling Stone - via Slicing Up Eyeballs.

"There will be multiple formats," said U2 manager Paul McGuinness. "If you pile a lot of extra material and packaging and design work into a super-duper box set, there are people who will pay quite a lot for it, so you can budget it at a very high level and pump up the value."

The plan is for each album to be issued on its own and that the set will include bonus audio and video material from U2's ZOO TV concerts.

Last month, it was reported that the band members were filming footage for an Achtung Baby documentary with It Might Get Loud's Davis Guggenheim.

ANI/Daily News & Analysis

Irish rock band U2 has revealed that the release of their new album will be delayed due to the failure of recording sessions.

The band had been working with Gnarls Barkley star Danger Mouse and superproducer RedOne, and had hoped to release their 13th studio album, the follow-up album to 2009's 'No Line on the Horizon', within the next few months.

But bassist Adam Clayton revealed the recording sessions with RedOne are just not working, and that with their busy schedule they would have to delay further studio work, which will most likely delay release of the album to late 2012.

U2 are working on a ''sci-fi'' sound with RedOne for their new album.

Contact Music

U2's next album will be "sci-fi".

The 'With or Without You' group, fronted by singer Bono, worked with Lady Gaga producer RedOne on tracks for their next record, resulting in a "futuristic" sound.

RedOne said: "Bono described the album as 'futuristic'. U2 going sci-fi or something, that's how he described it.

"We've put down a few ideas, but we don't know how many will end up on there.

"They have a very special way of working. A song is never done until the day before it comes out almost, so you never know."

Mercury, the label which is the UK home of U2, Chase & Status, The Killers and Arcade Fire, has stopped releasing singles on CD and vinyl.

BBC News

The label made a loss on singles in 2010 and said it would now only release them physically as "rare exceptions".

Physical singles now make up less than one per cent of weekly sales, with digital downloads catching on hugely.

Meanwhile, overall sales of individual tracks have risen from 66.9 million in 2006 to 161.8 million in 2010.

But the option to buy any song from an album on its own as a download means it's not just officially released singles that account for that rise.