‘We Were Onto Something’: U2 Announces ‘Shadow’ Version of ‘How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb’

Twenty years after U2 released How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, the band will be unveiling what it calls a “shadow album” from those sessions. How to Re-Assemble an Atomic Bomb, to be released Nov. 29, will include outtakes from the sessions from the 2004 release.

The 10-track album compiles never-heard songs from the making of the original album, including “Treason,” “Happiness,” and “Evidence of Life” as well as “Luckiest Man in the World,” which some fans heard years ago when the song, then known as “Mercy,” leaked online.

Ahead of the Re-Assemble release, U2 have shared the unreleased track “Country Mile”:

The new package, available to preorder now, will also include the “Vertigo” B-side “Are We Gonna Wait Forever?” and “Picture of You (X + W)” and will be released on vinyl for Record Store Day as well as on streaming platforms. In addition, How to Re-Assemble an Atomic Bomb will be combined with a remastered version of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb in vinyl and CD editions. The remastered How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb will also include “Fast Cars,” another outtake from those sessions. 

As the Edge said in a statement, “For this anniversary edition I went into my personal archive to see if there were any unreleased gems and I hit the jackpot. We chose ten that really spoke to us. Although at the time we left these songs to one side, with the benefit of hindsight we recognize that our initial instincts about them being contenders for the album were right, we were onto something.”

Recorded at the band’s studio in Dublin as well as the South of France, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb was the follow-up to 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind, which returned the band to rock basics and favorable reviews. It will also help U2 bring home five Grammys in 2006, including Album of the Year, Song of the Year (for “Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own”), Best Rock Album, and Best Rock Song (for “City of Blinding Lights”).

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Still, Atomic Bomb, which included production contributions from recurring U2 collaborators Steve Lillywhite, Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, left Bono with mixed emotions. “It’s the best collection of songs we’ve put together — there’s no weak songs,” he told RS in 2005. “But as an album, the whole isnm’t greater than the sum of its parts, and it fucking annoys me.” Still, the record had a moment:

With the unearthed tracks, fans will get to hear what else Bono and the band had in mind during the typically arduous making of a U2 record. “What you’re getting on this shadow album is that raw energy of discovery, the visceral impact of the music, a sonic narrative, a moment in time, the exploration and interaction of four musicians playing together in a room,” the Edge also said. “This is the pure U2 drop.”