U2 returns with an Easter-themed EP so soon after losing face and embarrassing themselves with an EP cashing in on political goodwill. We all know where Bono and chums stand, and while they may present as being on the right side of history, actions speak louder than words. At least Bruce Springsteen sings and writes with heart, no matter how loose an attitude people may have for his Streets of Minneapolis track. Easter is a different bit of business for U2, and a two-pronged approach to the holiday is heard on Easter Lily. Goodwill from a religious holiday pummelled into submission by Bono and the band, just like it was way back when the band made October. Better than Days of Ash is not a particularly high bar, but Easter Lily does, at least, vault that. Is it leftovers from the album sessions? Or is it, in fact, a split of the twelve songs which were set to make up the album? Who knows. Whatever the case, it’s not quite a return to form for the band, nowhere close.
Easter Lily is still far better than the album work U2 has released over the last few cycles. Between the ready-made iPhone album and the dreary acoustic covers of their old songs, U2 has at least prompted something new from themselves with this six-song EP. Bono became a caricature of himself around the time of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, but there are shades of the nuanced charmer on Easter Lily. Not enough to overhaul the project, but enough to realise U2 are retreating into those old favourites to save face. Song for Hal feels like routine U2 – steady guitar work from The Edge and a rallying cry for love and forgiveness by Bono. His vocal range is still strong, that much hasn’t changed. It remains a shining light of his otherwise sloppy writing, which is at least refined to some extent here. Godliness and those Easter-adjacent tones are toyed with well here, with a lot more in the way of honest reflection. Gone is the strawman frontman, he has turned the page.
They’re rolling out the hits-adjacent sound. Isn’t that what we should want? In a Life sounds just like the upbeat thrills of their older works, the meaningless, performative tone heard on Days of Ash is absent entirely. Can the line between the two not be walked better by U2? Maybe not. It doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of a song like In a Life, but it does feel relatively tame by the standards of War or The Joshua Tree. What keeps them going is a belief that they can do that again. It must be done again; otherwise, what’s the point? Easter Lily is the best contemporary music we’ve gotten from the band in two decades, and even then, it still falls a tad short. Scars sounds familiar too, nice enough to listen in to but never quite going as far as to redefine the band. U2 looks inwards and finds a sound which needed little change, just a reminder that it exists.
U2 at their tender best is a rarity these days, but the likes of Scars and the transition into Resurrection Song does, it would seem, mark a revival for the Bono-fronted band. Their sound is intact, filled with an energy not heard in some time. Instrumentally clinical, vocally clear, though some of the upbeat takes in the latter half of the EP threaten to capsize it. U2 makes it through all the same. Bono has tapped into an intimacy free of the shortcomings that dominated his work over the last few album cycles, and the band sounds all the fresher for it. Easter Lily isn’t all perfect; the suggestive whisper from Bono on EP closer COEXIST (I Will Bless The Lord At All Times?) engages the same feeling as having your back scratched when you thought you were home alone. Bono does his best Leonard Cohen impression and it’s far from convincing. A truly chilling end to what proves to be the most promising of U2’s projects since the early 2000s.
