U2 Unveil Carnaval de Luz, with a Parting Gift from Dolly Parton
U2 have confirmed that their sixteenth studio album, Carnaval de Luz — the title translating as “Carnival of Light” — will be released by Interscope on 13 November. The twelve-track record is their first complete collection of original material in nine years, and has already been heralded by two tasters: “Street of Dreams” in July and the newly issued “Silencio.” Jacknife Lee, a longstanding collaborator, produces.
The album’s closing number, “Torn,” is a country-inflected duet with the revered Dolly Parton. Co-written by U2, Parton and Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid, it features pedal steel from Daniel Lanois and is described as a tender meditation on fractured family ties with wider resonances. Bono has spoken movingly of Parton rising from her bed to record the vocal, remarking that he can scarcely credit such a performance from an eighty-year-old woman; it is understood to be her final recorded vocal.
The Edge has characterised the collection as unruly, provocative and hallowed, while Bono promises forceful guitars, deep bass and ecstatic rhythms. The cover art shows the band walking in line along a beach, a deliberate nod to the Beatles’ Abbey Road. In their fiftieth anniversary year, U2 have also issued two six-song EPs, Days of Ash and Easter Lily, for Ash Wednesday and Easter respectively. For devotees who have waited nearly a decade, the arrival of Carnaval de Luz will feel like a long-delayed feast — though it is Parton’s generous parting vocal that lends the record its quietest, most affecting note.
