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It's about midnight - on a phone call from Madrid - and Simple Minds frontman Jim Kerr is reflecting about the band's first album of new material in three years and their first for Virgin Records in the US, Good News From The Next World.
It's a powerful album about trying to keep the faith alive - and the challenge of self-renewal - in the face of disillusionment and dread. And Simple Minds sounds adamant, even defiant, playing and singing with a do-or-die urgency.
You can detect it right away in the new musical approach. Partner and guitarist Charlie Burchill spearheads a sound that instantly stands apart from the group's previous albums. "There's about 90-95% guitars and the rest is keyboards," says Burchill, pointing out that producer Keith Forsey (with whom they last worked on their classic "Don't You Forget About Me") ignites the guitar-driven mix even further.
Sparks fly on Good News From The Next World. Its lyrics are bold, the rhythms swift, the vocals resolute, with Kerr's phrasings as inventive as ever.
"Like the air that led me to it/She's the wind that sucked me through it," sings Kerr on the opening track and its rhythmically driving first single, She's A River. It's a song - sensual and dangerous all at once, finding its protagonist being driven irrationally but seductively by what Kerr calls "the muse" - that sets the stage for the rest of the album, which zooms in on temptation (Seven Deadly Sins), decadence (Criminal World), redemption (Great Leap Forward. My Life), faith (This Time), and love against all odds in the deep soulful grooves of Hypnotised)
"When I hear the strange night music/It's a warning signal there's a bridge to cross," Kerr reveals in Night Music, a pivotal song whose theme is central to Good News From The Next World: the need to find the strength and courage to move on to the uncharted next level. In And The Band Played On, Kerr sings "The old days they're the dying days/The new day's just begun." These lyrics apply to not only the LP's spiritual quest, but underline how Simple Minds have faced the future as artists, with their fighting spirit intact. As Kerr intones in My Life), : "A red guitar can get you far/But you still know how to fight."
"Creatively, I'm not always Happy Jack," says Kerr. "We're three years away from putting new music out and playing live. As a result, you get to experience a touch of a normal existence, which gives you a great chance to examine things. And I'm glad that it happened, because it led us to where we are now. But during that time, there was a lot of looking in the mirror and I don't really like to do that. For a period, I did lose a lot of confidence and I kind of cracked. It was probably for about a year. Depression is a much over-used word now, but something went on. It was almost like I had to make a new start - I had to bump some things down to the basics. It's the only time that's happened in my life.
"Compared to a lot of people, I don't have a grudge to bear." Kerr adds. "Things have gone pretty smoothly for me. But its not those kind of surface things I'm talking about; maybe it's about having to face up to the ensuing adulthood. Coping with that, trying to deal with that, and the next part of my life. You've covered so much ground and you go through all those big questions. I'm glad to see that just like it came, it went. And I think the fact that bein g a musician and a creative person, you have a great sense of company or companionship from that."
This period of reflection drove home a crucial reality, explains Kerr. "The fact is that Simple Minds began as Charlie and I when we were kids at school. That was how the whole thing started and through the '80s we were a collective - a band in the old, traditional sense, like a football team. As time goes on, you see a kind of realism. People come and go - so much so that we're back at the point of just Charlie and I. In looking at our last record, Real Life, I think one of its sins wasn't in the songwriting - it was the fact that we were afraid to admit that it really became Charlie and I again.
"We had always associated Simple Minds with being a big keyboard band," continues Kerr. "And to think of us as not having a keyboard player, it was immediately like, `The Doors wouldn't play without keyboards' or something. Which, of course, is very limiting. I think on the last album we tried to emulate the sounds of old, but we realized it wouldn't work. We were on a sinking artistic ship unless we faced up to the reality of the fact that we are a guitar band now: a guitar player and a singer.
"We had to not only feature the guitar, but we had to be really creative with them: make them speak different ways, try thing we would never have done," continues Kerr. "We have to make the economy of the situation work - we're the lifeblood of the whole project and I think that's why you have this defiance, this kind of adamance. We'd felt that we actually got rid of a lot of baggage that the tradition of the band had brought on. The '80s were great to us, but you don't want to be harping on about old things."
Says Burchill, whose incisive and impactful guitar lines emerge from the songs like searchlights at night: "The whole feel is now more urgent. I think it comes from the fact that we finally admitted to ourselves what we were going to do, which was to take away most of the keyboards and focus in on the guitars.
It's given us this energy that we needed. And as a player, I had to face up to the fact that we're now a guitar and a voice, and I had better make the most of it. It kind of forced us to really push us hard at what we do."
According to Burchill, some of the keyboard sounds on Good News From The Next World are actually generated from the guitars through the use of Lesley speakers, a harmonizer and a special octave guitar. "But at the same time," he points out, "there is definitely a different approach when you get these sounds from a guitar as opposed to what you would play on a keyboard."
Production-wise, Burchill says that Keith Forsey "has this incredible energy. He's very rock & roll in his approach to things and it's as if he's quite mad. But at the same time, he has a brilliant drive. We found that when we tended to step back, he was able to really push both of us to accept who we are, and the voice didn't need to have all this echo on it. He was much more direct with things." Kerr adds that Forsey "got us some great guys to play with, especially drummer Mark Schulman, a young American guy. We told Keith, `We don't want the usual hot guys, we don't want the usual hired hands, we want musicians who were truly excited.'"
Just as Simple Minds' last release, Glittering Prize 81-92 - a compilation album of their greatest hits - closed the door on one era, Good News From The Next World opens up another one. "We knew we wanted an album that unquestionably said that this was the first step on a new journey," states Kerr. And the band has delivered nine stro ng songs (over the course of 48 minutes), with no excess. "We needed an album that really said what it was, called a spade a spade, proclaimed the nature of the beast. There's not a bit of this and a bit of that on the album and, `Oh here's a novelty track.' There's none of that."
Good News From The Next World is clearly a statement of intent, a declaration with a purpose, as Simple Minds restlessly probe the world around them and their own lives. The lyrics originated from Kerr's notebook-phrases, thoughts and ideas he's always writing down - and dialogues with songwriting collaborator Burchill. "During the day when we're working, we'll have the most fantastic conversations and argu ments," says Kerr, who later gets inside the melodies. "You see the picture and you hear the words, and I'll look in my notebook and there's usually something that's been written in the same period that matches up."
In the end, Good News From The Next World poignantly reflects the countdown to the end of the century and validates our own conflicting feelings of hope and dread. "It's the end of a one-thousand year period, notes Kerr, "and they say that in these times you get this turbulence and great excitement, but also a great fear or a great confusion. So exactly where are we in the grand scheme of things? I don't think anyone knows the answer to that, but it's definitely hanging above us and I also think my age is reflected in these songs - I'm no longer a youth, that's for sure. I certainly don't feel like an old man, but I'm hitting on a certain part of my life. There's a great uncertainty that's also exciting.
"The future's a precarious thing. A lot of people think its all downhill from here, and there's a lot of evidence to support that. But for me, it's kind of hard to believe that. To me, it's like you'll go somewhere else, there'll be another st ate of consciousness. Not that I have any secrets, not that I've been given some special map.
"It's the questions that are still to be asked that appeal to me. It's the songs that are still to be written that appeal to me. It's the life that is still to be lived that appeals to me. I don't find the search tiring at all."
Sounds like there's Good News From The Next World after all...