08 Feb, 2010 Another New Cycle!
In many places it might be a little too early to go rejoicing about the first colours of spring, but here in Sicily those colours have arrived in great style and with them a new cycle of time has begun. Likewise with Simple Minds!
It never fails to amaze me how we flit from album to album, each with a different direction, and no two ever quite in the same vein. And yet somehow a feeling of continuity does exist, one that gives sense to the journey so far.
It’s not like we sit and plan the moves, it is more like we are guided by an invisible hand, blindfolded even, then asked to shoot our arrows in the full acceptance that wherever they land will be the territory that gives birth to each new phase.
Only last week along with Jez Coad and Charlie Burchill, I spent an afternoon in London putting some vocals on ideas that Charlie had earlier put forward, it was during this session that Jez noticed how the new ideas had the same distinctiveness about them, that they were made from the same cells.
He equally commented on how they sounded a world away from Graffiti Soul, the album we released only eight months ago. By anyone’s standard eight months is hardly a long time and yet true enough, we had already in that short gap taken an artistic flight to somewhere else altogether.
The fuller picture of where we have started to go to with our new music will emerge over this year as we move at a pace that Charlie foremost feels comfortable with. It is from him that we take our cue prior to then shaping and moulding whatever ideas he initiates. But already it feels good to be laying down tracks on a path that hopefully will continue to prove that Simple Minds never really stop evolving, and in doing so avoid strip mining the same territory.
Of course writing songs is one thing, but writing what the listener hopefully feels are great songs, is something else altogether. And although the creative drive sometimes does seem to produce the initial spark of an idea all on its own, in no way however does that mean that the finished idea comes easy.
That I wish! Or actually on second thoughts I really don’t wish that it would come easy seeing as I enjoy the challenge of wrestling with ideas far too much.
There is a great satisfaction in doing battle with ourselves, especially when we hit on results that go beyond our own expectations. And even when we don’t manage to quite crack a result that we would have hoped for, the experience is never empty given that we will have gained insights that’ll help us in future situations. In that sense there is always something gained, always something won.
Jim