Yesterday, David Fricke of Rolling Stone posted some unpublished excerpts from his interview with U2 frontman Bono, which included the news that the arena-rock titans are sitting on a slew of unreleased material.
Bono told Fricke the following when asked about the new songs:
“We have Songs of Ascent, which is the meditative work that was meant to complement No Line on the Horizon. We’ve got a rock album. We also have a club-sounding album. And then we have the Spider-Man [musical] stuff.
Across those four, there are 25-30 songs. Now we have to decide how we go about releasing them? Do we release them in their groups? Chris Martin [of Coldplay] called me and said, ‘I hear you’ve got all these albums going. I have a great idea. Why not just pick the best songs from all of them and put them out now?’ And I’m like, ‘Hmm…’ [Strokes his chin]."
No word on any release dates, but Bono said he thinks the band “probably will” have a new album out by the time U2 returns to North America this summer to play some rescheduled shows.
Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.

The 20 Best U2 Songs of All…
U2: No Line on the Horizon
I can't see their manager letting them release one album of killer stuff and dumping the rest when they can get four releases out of it. No offense to the guy, but he's definitely the bottom line watcher, and flagging music sales has him worked up.