Interviewed in Q prior to the release of Street Fighting Years in 1989, Simple Minds front man Jim Kerr was sanguine about the position the band had worked itself into over the previous decade. “I was aware of the end of the ’80s coming up, and like it or hate it, we were one of the major bands.”
Whilst he was obviously correct, that sort of fact-based hubris slid less comfortably as the nineties came up in the rear view mirror. And following the totemic synth pop majesty of New Gold Dream there were artistic questions to answer around what they’d had to sacrifice in order to reach this commercial zenith.
Direction of the Heart is the band’s eighteenth studio album and finds Kerr and fellow original member Charlie Burchill as part of a multi-generational line up. Opening with a creditable energy, Vision Thing – a song dedicated to the singer’s late father – and First You Jump are as contemporary as any of New Order’s recent output, whilst Act of Love is remodeled from the husk of one of their earliest songs.
Although they and the arena sized closer Walls Come Down are on the right side of their almost self imposed creative divide, the hackneyed Celtic tones of Solstice Kiss present an unwanted throwback to the Belfast Child era, and the likes of Human Traffic and Who Killed Truth are slight underneath the bombast. Direction of the Heart finds Simple Minds still thinking big, even if the past has taught them that bigger isn’t always better.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 