Four years after Simple Minds returned to form on Walk Between Worlds, they emerged more confident on their adrenaline-fueled 19th album Direction of the Heart. Here, with conviction and confidence, they wield pulsing synths, arena rock drums, Charlie Burchill's silvery-sounding guitars, and Jim Kerr's dry, emphatic vocals for a cache of fine songs.
In 2019 Kerr moved back to Scotland to be near his terminally ill father. He called Burchill, who showed up and brought recording gear. They wrote and demo'ed an album over six months. After his father passed, they recorded through 2021 at Kerr's empty hotel in Sicily, shuttered amid COVID-19's restrictions. Kerr and Burchill re-enlisted bassist Ged Grimes, acoustic guitarist Gordy Goudie, powerhouse drummer Cherisse Osei, keyboardist Berenice Scott, and vocalist Sarah Brown to assist them.
Opener "Vision Thing," composed for Kerr's dad, is a transcendent, synth-driven anthem. The band is at full attack as synths zig-zag through Burchill's snaky fills above a cut-time drum kit and breathing bassline. Following a languid synth intro, "First You Jump (Then You Fly)" starts with Burchill's effects-laden guitar in overdrive. The drums dance as keyboards and bass cascade. Kerr and Brown deliver the lyric in unison with commitment and resolve. "Human Traffic" boasts an electro-rock hook and a guest vocal appearance from Sparks' Russel Mael. The chanted choruses and woven electric guitars wind through layered hook-laden synths with the hallmarks of an '80s anthem. An acoustic guitar introduces "Who Killed Truth" and Kerr enters with his still glorious falsetto supported by Brown. Burchill adds sinewy fills amid wafting keys, and Grimes and Osei anchor the band in a booming shuffle. "Solstice Kiss" weds Celtic pipe and string sounds to pillowy synths and fingerpicked guitars as a wordless chorus flows in. Osei's big beat duels with Burchill's distorted guitar and Grimes' loose bassline before Scott coaxes Kerr's sublime croon in. The refrain erupts as a fist-pumping crescendo and the band elevates the proceedings into emotionally transcendent overdrive. Brown's brief, gospelized vocal solo is a highlight. "Act of Love" was the band's opener at their first gig in 1978, and the first track on their initial demo. By 1979, they were bored with it and never played it again. Here, its modernized rearrangement fits with the rest of the music on offer with airtight precision and rock & roll energy. "Planet Zero" seemingly starts in the middle with a wail from Brown above interlocking synth patterns and breakbeat snares. The set closes with a neo-electro read of the Call's '80s-era MTV hit "When the Walls Came Down." In Simple Minds' treatment, it registers not as a prophetic alarm of political and social collapse, but as a gripping paean to the power of hope in times of darkness. Whether taken whole or as the sum of its parts, Direction of the Heart is an album by a band that still has something to prove. They deliver big. Without forsaking their core sound, they offer listeners energized, anthemic, poignant, electro-charged rock & roll.
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