Irish legends U2 have shared their new ‘Easter Lily’ EP.
The band are back in the studio, and opened their account for 2026 with last month’s ‘Days Of Ash’ EP, released on Ash Wednesday.
New EP ‘Easter Lily’ was timed to land over Easter weekend, and it features six new songs.
Tapping into aspects of Easter’s liturgical meaning – ‘Resurrection Song’ for example – it also taps into more personal themes. ‘Song For Hal’ for instance, was prompted by the loss of Hal Willner, who would have turned 70 on Easter Monday and passed away almost six years ago to the day.
This isn’t the first time U2 have utilised religious or spiritual themes – famously, the band’s ‘October’ album was replete with Christian imagery – and the EP connects to current events.
‘COEXIST (I Will Bless The Lord At All Times?)’ is a lullaby for parents of children caught up in war, and it features a soundscape by Brian Eno, a key collaborator with the band across four decades now.
Accompanied by a special e-zine of their long-running in-house magazine Propaganda, the EP is out now.
We are in the studio, still working towards a noisy, messy, ‘unreasonably colourful’ album to play LIVE… which is where U2 lives. We still look to vivid rock n roll as an act of resistance against all this awfulness on our small screens. These are for sure ‘wilderness years’ for so many of us looking at the mayhem out there in the world.
It’s a time that has our band digging deeper into our lives to find a wellspring of songs to try meet the moment… With Easter Lily we ended up asking very personal questions like: Are our own relationships up to these challenging times? How hard do you fight for friendship? Can our faith survive the mangling of meaning that those algorithms love to reward? Is all religion rubbish and still ripping us apart…? Or are there answers to find in its crevices? Are there ceremonies, rituals, dances that we might be missing in our lives? From the rite of Spring to Easter and its promise of rebirth and renewal… Patti Smith’s album Easter gave me so much hope when it was released in 1978. I wasn’t yet 18. The title is a nod to her.
