Announcing that their genre confuddled new album will not be out this year, U2 - or at least Bono - have made a number of fairly silly and very entertaining statements.

Cop a load of this guy: "This is our chance for us to defy gravity once again." That's Mr Bono Vox. "‘We have what it takes, we have the songs, new rhythms and a guitar player who is not ready to re-enter earth's atmosphere until he's taken a slice of the moon!"

There's more: "‘We’ve hit a rich songwriting vein,"  he explains, the metaphors making him dizzy. "It gets a bit dark down here but looks like we've found diamonds not coal. I thought a while back we might have the album wrapped by now, but why come up above ground now if there's more priceless stuff to be found?"

The band has most recently been recording in the south of France. They've already done work in Fez and Dublin with three of their most famed producers - Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite. Bono reports that the band now was "50 or 60" songs to consider for inclusion on the follow-up to 2004's "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb." Cripes!

"We know we have to emerge soon but we also know that people don't want another U2 album unless it is our best ever album," the man says. "It has to be our most innovative, our most challenging ... or what's the point?"

Indeed.

"The last two records were very personal, with a kind of three piece at their heart, the primary colors of rock -- bass, guitars and drum," he says. "But what we're about now is of the same order as the transition that took us from 'The Joshua Tree' to 'Achtung Baby.'"

According to Billboard.com, some of the new tracks include "Get on Your Boots," "For Your Love," "Breathe," "No Line on the Horizon" and an eight-minute epic, "Moment of Surrender." A chap who has heard several of the works-in-progress describes them to Billboard as "amazing and a little out there. I hope they don't change anything."

"We said to each other," Bono exhales, "that if we got to the great place then we wouldn’t stop…"

The Great Place! Amazing. Don't stop now. Don't ever stop.