In 1976, the Vietnam War was winding down, an oil crisis had led to economic catastrophes across the globe, and a fledgling rock quartet—made up of a young Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr.—formed at a secondary school in Dublin. “Unemployment was everywhere; punk rock arrives, and it’s tearing things down—anarchy in the UK,” The Edge tells Apple Music. “That was the very moment we arrived. To us, the door had opened with an opportunity to try and start finding something new to say, some new direction. Right now, it’s like we got back to that moment.” The guitarist is referring to the tumultuous present that churned around them as they hurtled toward Carnaval De Luz, U2’s 16th studio album. A fixation on conclusion and renewal, on endings giving way to fresh beginnings, reverberated as they consumed headlines about war, famine, state-sanctioned violence, and political unrest over the last few years. Days of Ash and Easter Lily, the pair of EPs that preceded Carnaval De Luz, faced these issues head-on (“American Obituary” on Days of Ash invokes the memory of Renée Good, who was murdered in Minneapolis the week they wrote it). “The world around us was in a bit of a spin,” Bono says. “We wanted to get to some sort of weightlessness, yet we were writing songs about what was going on in the world. We couldn’t talk about anything else.” In spite of that, a rebellious, optimistic spirit is palpable across Carnaval De Luz, from the euphoric “Street of Dreams” to the rallying beat of “La Reina.” “Can’t Stop Us Now” offers up heartfelt calls for unity and belief in a greater good (“I see a summer down the road... Where the rainbow refuses the gold/And that’s revolutionary”). But tough reflection and hard-earned perspective weave throughout its lyrics, too. “Superficiality” is a love song for this overstimulated age (“You and me are breaking news/Because the news can’t break us”), and “The Mirror Maker (Rosalía)” praises artists they admire, like ROSALÍA and Patti Smith, for their ability to inspire and “push through the mirror” of fame. “Torn,” a Dolly Parton-penned ballad she had offered to U2 when they reached out to collaborate, speaks directly to families divided by politics (“When halfway seems too far to meet/And across the table too hard to reach”) at the perfect time. “We had a couple of ideas for a Celtic Irish folk project that we were looking at exploring,” says Bono. “I got in touch with [Parton] and we were discussing some of the songs. One of them was called ‘Lifelong.’ It was kind of a marrying song, a wedding song, and she said, ‘That’s a little too Irish for me, if you don’t mind.’ I said, ‘You’re from the Appalachians, aren’t you all Scots-Irish?’ She said, ‘Yeah, but I’m talking about my voice. I got a song started called “Torn.” Now you can take it somewhere else, and I’d like to see where you could take it.’ It was quite traditional, and we really took it somewhere else. I was really surprised that she ran with it, because it had some real friction of the times in it. She just took flight.” Though “Torn” ends the album on a somber note, it’s in service of the balance Carnaval De Luz aims to strike. “The real challenge is, can you stare darkness in the face and still choose joy?” says The Edge. “That’s the defiance we’re interested in. You don’t ignore what’s going on. You still find the way to celebrate what’s positive and look to the future in a positive way. What we’re interested in is finding a way to push back against all that.”