The Sunday Times in the UK carries a monster U2 feature this weekend, great reading in the countdown to the album release.

Here's a taster.

'When we get back to his place he puts on U2's new CD, 'How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb'. Bono sings, karaoke-style, along with it. One track begins with the line 'Take my shoes,' which he sings directly into my ear.

The Edge is looking solemn and worried. 'Look at him,' says Bono. 'He's going through all those mixes, assessing it all in his head.'

Bono sings the line 'I know that we don't talk but can you hear me when I siiiiing'. It's a weird cry that vibrates into the night after the already vibrating note from Bono's voice on the album.

'I am hitting a note a man of my age shouldn't be hitting,' he says. 'I don't know what's happened to me. I have a different voice. Where did that come from?'

One theory is that 'How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb' is about dismantling the life and death in 2001 of his father,Bob Hewson, who was a big-time opera fan and a perfect tenor. Since he's gone, Bono walks in a different way; maybe it's his father' s walk - maybe he swallowed him.

'Or maybe something just lifted,' he says, 'Loke a very strange weight,and I am more at ease with myself. And this is as easy as I'll ever get, and this is pretty good. He is the atomic bomb in question and it is his era, the cold-war era, and we had a bit of a cold war, myself and him. When he died, I had no idea what would happen. I did start behaving a little odd, took on more and more projects....'

If you are in the UK, catch the full story in the Sunday Times this weekend.