REMEMBER that sense of excitement all U2 devotees felt on hearing All That You Can’t Leave Behind for the first time, as it firmly signalled a return to form for their favourite band at the start of the millennium.

Sadly, this offering matches the disappointment experienced for long periods of the 1990s when the likes of Zooropa and Pop left those same fans wondering whether the group would ever revisit past glories.

Whereas those two albums could be excused as experimental, Songs Of Innocence is just plain dull. Little wonder that iPhone owners have been deleting the songs just as quickly as they were downloaded for free on their hand-held sound systems, following the Irish band’s controversial partnership with Apple.

Equally as understandable, now, is U2’s long delay in releasing material that has reportedly been knocking around for years.

With such a stellar back catalogue, including timeless greats One, With Or Without You and Pride, it must have pained the Dublin foursome to share, or indeed inflict via iTunes, this batch of songs on their disciples and the rest of the world.

Drummer Larry Mullen’s role in Songs Of Innocence never stretches beyond the unimaginative, although the occasional heavy guitar riff from The Edge is a redeeming feature.

His characteristic strumming, along with some catchy chanting and a decent chorus, gets the record off to a solid enough start with The Miracle (Of Joey Malone) but none of what follows would make it into a compilation of U2’s top 100 songs.

California completes a trio of turgid tunes about American states and cities, following the likes of Miami and New York on previous albums – an obsession Bono should leave well behind.

Later, Volcano hints at the band’s late-1970s punk origins but, rather than erupting into life, leaves the listener feeling dormant and, while Song For Someone offers promising opening vocals with “You’ve got a face not spoilt by beauty/I have some scars from where I’ve been”, it quickly disappoints, too.

There is none of the rock’n’roll energy provided in the band’s last three albums by the likes of Elevation, Vertigo and Get On Your Boots and it is to be hoped that Songs Of Innocence’s greatest legacy will be another tour because everybody should witness U2 live at least once.

Just make sure you time those all-important toilet breaks for the tracks on this album.

• Songs Of Innocence was released by Apple to half a billion iTunes Store customers on September 9.