U2 album delayed by inspiration

Scratch the new U2 album off your Christmas list. Singer Bono says the album, which had been anticipated for release this fall, will now arrive sometime in 2009. But he says there’s a good reason for the delay.

“We’ve hit a rich songwriting vein and we don’t want to stop,” Bono says on the band’s website, U2.com. “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 group has been at work since last year in recording studios in Dublin, Morocco and France, working on the follow-up to 2005’s “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb,” which won the Grammy for album of the year. They’ve piled up 50 or 60 tracks and are still at it, according to the website.