U2 could release a second album this year. And this one could be a reggae album.

The story goes that while the band was recording its No Line on the Horizon disc, members simultaneously put some reggae tracks to tape. The new album would be called Songs of Ascent.

"We're making a kind of heartbreaker, a meditative, reflective piece of work, but not indulgent," Bono told Rolling Stone magazine. "It will have a clear mood, like Kind of Blue. Or A Love Supreme would be a point of reference, for the space it occupies in people's lives, which is to say, with that album, I almost take my shoes off to listen to it."

The Gleaner newspaper in Jamaica points out that U2 did first make it big on Island Records, the same label that made a star out of Bob Marley (whom Bono inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame in 1994).

[AP photo]