REVIEW: U2 - Easter Lily EP
"If I sound ridiculous, I'm not done yet"
32:29 // April 3rd, 2026 // Island Records
I’m not a particularly religious person. However, 2026 seems to be the year that Lent is doing a lot of good for me: after being happily surprised by every Moldovan restaurant having a “Lent menu” that solely featured vegetarian dishes - and thus allowing me to have more than a salad and fries while eating out in eastern Europe - my childhood favourite band U2 have now released their second surprise EP of the year to mark the end of Lent. That’s nice!
In my review for the EP that apparently marked the start of Lent, Days of Ash, I argued that it was a perfectly fine project that mostly served its purpose as boilerplate love>hate politics for disillusioned boomers. Its music was mostly just “fine”, yet a lot better than what the average person would expect from a bunch of Irish 60-somethings. Now, six weeks and a whole lot of abstinence later, the fairly middling nature of that EP might just help the fresh Easter Lily sound even better than it already does. These six tracks are easily the best U2 have sounded in an extremely long time, for the simple reason that it feels like the band aren’t trying to do anything except be who and what they have always been.
If there’s one throughline in U2’s career, it’s their willingness to boldly and sometimes clumsily explore very human feelings and desires over some noodly riffs and juicy basslines. Sure, the political stuff has been rearing its head for decades too, but the thing that connects 1980’s Boy, 1997’s Pop and 2014’s Songs of Innocence isn’t the masterful commentary on the powers that shape the world; it’s the attempts at grasping the shapes that power individual lives. Easter Lily finds the band realising this and capitalising on it for quite possibly the first time ever: the shockingly self aware “Resurrection Song” juxtaposes a classic Bono-ism with a tongue-in-cheek admission to great effect (“If love is in the air, let’s take a breath / if I sound ridiculous, I’m not done yet”). For the most part, each song reflects on religion, friendship, or confusion: it feels, dare I say, authentic. Moreover, this focus on more personal topics allows for fewer lyrical fumbles, and ultimately makes the entire experience all the more enjoyable.
Thankfully, we don’t just find Bono at the top of his 2026 game: the entire band appear locked in. By focusing less on recapturing former glory and more on establishing an atmosphere, the sparkly riff that opens “Song for Hal” brilliantly interacts with the understatedly military-style drumming that has been noticeably absent for so long. Sure, that particular song also reminds us of the fact that The Edge is a much better vocalist than Bono these days, but that’s soon forgotten once one realises that, guess what, bass is audible again! Jacknife Lee’s mix allows for some rather delightful grooves to shine through, with “Easter Parade” serving as a prime example of what a good line can do for a U2 song.
In essence, Easter Lily is pretty great, and that is so much more than what I was expecting from U2 in 2026. By simply being themselves, the band manage to sound so much more like their former (better) selves than on the explicit attempts of Days of Ash. This project is not going to change the minds of anyone who’s not already a certified U2-enjoyer, but those who wish to hear some of the best songs the band have put out in two decades, there’s a lot to enjoy here.
8.0/10