U2’s New ‘Carnaval De Luz’ Album Will Feature a Dolly Parton Duet, Said to Be Her Last Recorded Vocal
For anyone waiting for years to get a U2 album again, it might have seemed as if the band was, you know, running to stand still. But the day is at hand, as the group’s first full-length recording in nine years, “Carnaval De Luz,” has been set for a Nov. 12 release, Interscope Records announced Thursday.
The concluding track on the album is a duet with Dolly Parton, “Torn,” described in a release as “what has sadly turned out to be her last recorded vocal performance,” put down on tape in June by the country superstar. The song was co-written by U2, Parton and Johnny McDaid, and is described as “a tender country song detailing broken family ties that holds wider resonances.” The track features pedal steel guitar from Daniel Lanois.
“When she got ill,” Bono said in a Rolling Stone story published shortly after news of the album came out, “she got out of her bed to sing this song. And you can hear that. And I can’t even listen to it now… She sang her heart out, and I cannot believe that’s an 80-year-old woman.”
The forthcoming album is being previewed with a new single, “Silencio,” released to DSPs in conjunction with the morning announcement. The song was described in a release as a “2mins 35second homage to early surf-punk insolence.”
Bono explained to Rolling Stone what led up to the nick-of-time Parton collab. He said he had pursued her to participate in an Irish folk-themed side project he was working on, but after he played her demos over the phone, “she said, ‘That’s a little too Irish for me.’ But she said, ‘I got this song. It’s called “Torn,” and do you wanna see where you can take it somewhere else, maybe?'” From there, Bono and McDaid did a rewrite of the lyrics to make it about a mother watching her family splinter, and, the magazine says, Parton agreed to sing the new Bono/McDaid version of her tuen.
The new album — which has a cover featuring the band strolling in a line by the seaside, in an image that could be called “Abbey Beach” — was characterized as “a collection of 12 songs exploring themes of spirituality, friendship, freedom and endurance in the face of dark, encroaching forces.” The set was produced by longtime collaborator Jacknife Lee.
Other collaborators include Brian Eno (doing co-writing and synthesizer duty on “Go (Carnaval De Luz),” “The Greatest Show on Earth” and “Can’t Stop Us Now”), Martin Garrix (co-writing on “Glorify”), and Lanois (pedal steel on “Torn”), with additional production from Ryan Tedder on “Silencio.”
The music video for “Silencio” was shot in Mexico City earlier this year. It is directed by Cliqua, aka the Mexican-American directing duo Pasqual Gutiérrez and Raúl “RJ” Sanchez.
Said Bono in a statement, “Roll up, roll up, roll up! Bring your purple socks, your broken hearts, your rose-tinted naivety… oh be amazed in the hall of mirrors. There will be loud guitars, deep bass, some ecstatic rhythms and, yes, some silver tears will make an appearance!…
“‘Cause in the near distance just outside our carnival of light there are all kinds of creatures… the same imagination that brings us our creativity can also bring us monsters,” Bono continued. “So we make the drums louder. We build a bigger fire. We make our stories wilder and funnier. We make the melodies sweeter and the songs, they better shine, because if the world is in darkness we better not be.”
The Edge’s official comment about the album was more succinct: “It’s a messy, provocative, sacred collection of songs — and features the first-ever use of flat-wound strings on a U2 recording. Just saying.”
The band has been far from dormant lately, even if this is officially the first new album in nearly a decade. It was preceded by two surprise-release/digital-only EPs, “Days of Ash” and “Easter Lily,” each of them including six songs, released for Ash Wednesday and Easter, respectively. There is no overlap between those two EPs and the content of the new album, so U2 will have released 24 songs in a calendar year by the time “Carnaval De Luz” comes out — a productive way to celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary.
The first single from the album, “Street of Dreams,” already came out in July, though the new project remained officially unannounced at that time.
The full track list:
The track listing for Carnaval De Luz is:
- Go (Carnaval De Luz)
- La Reina
- Street Of Dreams
- The Mirror Maker (Rosalía)
- Superficiality
- If The World Is At War We Better Not Be
- Silencio
- The Greatest Show On Earth
- Glorify
- Midnight Sunshine
- Can’t Stop Us Now
- Torn (Feat. Dolly Parton)