Can’t Stand The Heat!

Can’t Stand The Heat!

In a world that seems increasingly obsessed by air brushed perfection, somebody recently asked out of frustration “When do you think we might hear a world beating band throw caution to the wind and just go into a studio and record a bunch of songs for the sheer joy of making music, not worrying about hook lines and singles and perfect mixes and even what the world would think of it when they emerge blinking into the light?”

Ah, I don’t know the answer to that but I can tell you that when Simple Minds go into the studio in early September to begin the first stage recordings of what will hopefully be our new album, making music for the sake of making music and with no other concerns is precisely what we will be doing – although I am not sure that we will be entirely dismissive of melodic hooks and catchy riffs.

Anyone who was at our recent Paris show a few weeks ago will be able to tell you that we began our set with two brand new and as yet unrecorded songs – very rough demo’s apart. It was a messy affair in some ways and I made a complete pig’s ear of the opening tune. But it was also very exciting – in a who the hell cares fashion – to see the band demonstrate in the best way that we had already exited our Graffiti Soul phase, albeit that it was released barely a year ago.

And as for those new songs? They have some way to go of course, but they came across with a convincing swagger, or at least to my ears they did. And if evidence was needed of a band making music for the sheer love of making music then that is precisely what we were doing there on that night.

It is after all important we feel to keep a sense of momentum around ourselves, particular so when it’s creative. Otherwise you can calcify so easily and without even knowing it. More so however, it is important to keep the kind of “cumbersome gravity” that inevitably sticks to most “classic bands” at bay.

The gravity that I refer to is a type that somehow conspires to make many of them (us) move at a dinosaur pace at most. (You know the kind of thing, an album every 4 or 5 years, and somehow kind of running on empty when it eventually comes.) Simple Minds are no complete stranger to that scenario I admit. But then again not so recently, as undoubtedly the newer momentum that we came across during the middle of this last decade has gone on to propel us right up to this day where we are in the process of doing some of our best work, as well as doing it at a pace that others find unimaginable.)

And so we move on in to these on going concert dates that will occur through July before we head for Brazil in the middle of next month. I must say after the blazing sunlight and full on heat of performing in the open air in Madrid and the stiflingly warm Bataclan, I now look forward even more to moving up to the cooler climate of Oslo. For someone who made the decision to spend so much of my life in the Mediterranean, I just don’t seem to be able to hack the heat these days, least not like I once did.

Jim Kerr