Album review: Experience counts on U2’s return to form

A new U2 album is not the earth-shattering event it might once have been. The biggest talking point around 2014’s Songs of Innocence was that it was bunged, unsought, onto the hard drives of 300 million iTunes users — the music forgotten in the ensuing furore.

With Songs of Experience, it is therefore understandable that the Dubliners should play things safe. Nobody is going to break into your inbox as you sleep and surreptitiously impregnate your computer with 60-plus minutes of Bono warbling. If you want this record you will have to seek it out for yourself.

In other ways, too, Songs of Experience — conceived of during the same sessions that yielded Songs of Innocence — is agreeably conventional. The too-many-cooks tag-team of producers overseeing Songs Of Innocence — including Danger Mouse and Ryan Tedder — has been slimmed down to Royal Blood wingman Jolyon Thomas, a back-to-basics stance that pays off with what is arguably U2’s finest album since 2004’s How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.