U2, Pictish Trail and Jessie Ware each respond to personal and creative moments with records that balance sorrow, adaptation and exuberance
The musical brief for this round-up centers on three recent releases that take very different emotional routes. At the heart of that trio is U2 and their surprise six-track Easter Lily, a release that leans into consolation after an earlier, angrier counterpart.
Alongside it are new recordings from Pictish Trail and Jessie Ware, each offering a distinct sonic palette. This overview will examine what these records do, highlight standout tracks, and note a couple of interesting classical and folk releases that also deserve attention.
These projects arrive as compact statements rather than sprawling albums: U2’s EP functions as a reflective stopgap while the band prepares fuller work, Pictish Trail presents intimate, autotuned confessions, and Jessie Ware delivers a celebration of gospel-tinged pop and disco.
Throughout the text I use album and EP as markers for format and approach, while flagging production landmarks like Brian Eno collaborations and the use of autotune where relevant.
U2: Easter Lily — a season of consolation
Easter Lily is the quieter counterpart to the band’s earlier, more confrontational release. Issued unexpectedly and timed to liturgical symbolism, the six songs emphasize faith, hope and love rather than outrage. Production favors shimmering guitars, restrained percussion and atmospheric washes that create space for introspection. Across the set, familiar band textures are present: Adam Clayton’s anchoring low end, Larry Mullen Jr’s measured drumming and The Edge’s chiming guitar lines, but the overall tone is gentler, aiming for solace rather than sermon.
Standout moments include Song for Hal, a tender tribute led vocally by The Edge and dedicated to the late producer Hal Willner, and the bass-led Scars, which transforms wounds into a kind of reclaimed beauty. The EP closes with the expansive, Brian Eno–touched COEXIST (I Will Bless the Lord At All Times?), a hybrid of hymn and soundscape that ends in an a cappella dissolution. Taken together, the tracks read as a quiet reappraisal: less theatrical thrust and more intimate reckoning.
Other notable new records
Pictish Trail: Life Slime
Pictish Trail (Johnny Lynch) shifts between brittle introspection and lo-fi charm on Life Slime. The record leans on autotune as a deliberate expressive device, softening the edges of confession and creating a counterpoint to the otherwise sparse instrumentation: Casio keyboards, acoustic guitar and drum machine. Themes revolve around break-up, acceptance and the odd uplift moment where the slime of existence looks oddly luminous. Tracks such as the meditative title piece and the sprawling eight-minute exploration Another Way capture a slow move from shock toward acceptance, while Torch Song slides back into plaintive balladry reminiscent of folk-adjacent peers.
Jessie Ware: Superbloom
Jessie Ware turns outward with Superbloom, a sixth album that revels in glossy disco, gospel-soul flourishes and theatrical vocal flights. The title track unfurls into full gospel rapture, with Ware touching ecstatic vocal registers. Elsewhere, Automatic pairs jazz-inflected woodwind with refined spirit, and Mr Valentine builds playful call-and-response energy over a slinky bassline. She pauses for the sepia-tinged 16 Summers, a maternal reflection before returning to pure Seventies Euro disco for the closing number. On this album she sounds confident and at ease, combining elegance with buoyant popcraft.
Classical and folk highlights
Beyond these contemporary releases, two recordings stand out in other fields. A lean period-instrument rendering of Handel’s Messiah by an Irish Baroque ensemble offers nimble clarity and tender phrasing, carried by a small group of singers that foregrounds dramatic storytelling over grandiosity. In folk, accordionist Pàdruig Morrison’s debut Buin celebrates Gaelic language and place, blending wistful accordion lines, flute, and fiddle into compositions rooted in tradition yet open to contemporary arrangement. Both releases reward attentive listening and complement the modern records above by demonstrating how intimacy and fidelity to source material can be powerful musical choices.
Taken together, these releases form a compact survey of how artists confront grief, renewal and joy in recorded form. From U2’s reflective EP and Pictish Trail’s autotuned confessions to Jessie Ware’s celebratory pop, the common thread is intentionality: small bodies of work crafted to communicate specific emotional states rather than to chase volume or trend. For listeners seeking consolation, catharsis or dance-floor release, this batch of records has something to offer.
