News | BMG | London, 10/27/2022

Simple Minds Release New Album Via BMG

The legendary Scottish rock band have released their new album “Direction Of The Heart” via BMG. The release follows the expansion of the band’s cooperation with BMG in July. “Direction Of The Heart” is the band’s eighteenth studio album and Simple Minds’ first release since 2018’s album “Walk Between Worlds”.

The legendary Scottish rock band have released their new album “Direction Of The Heart” via BMG. The release follows the expansion of the band’s cooperation with BMG in July, when the Bertelsmann music subsidiary acquired the publishing rights to more than 240 songs, including neighboring rights, and the royalties from the band’s entire recorded catalog. At the time, BMG and Simple Minds announced the new album for October.

“Direction Of The Heart” is the band’s eighteenth studio album and Simple Minds’ first release since 2018’s album “Walk Between Worlds”, the band’s first album in over 20 years that landed among the UK Top 5 albums. The album's opening track, “Vision Thing”, sets the pace for a succinct nine-track album. With music written by Charlie Burchill and lyrics by frontman Jim Kerr, the song is a tribute to Kerr’s “best pal”, his late father, who passed away in 2019. Jim Kerr said: “How to make a feel-good ‘Electro-rock’ record during the very worst of times? Direction Of The Heart is the result of that challenge. Who would have thought we’d have so much fun creating it?”

Numerous guests featured 

Most of “Direction Of The Heart’s” tracks were created and demoed in Sicily, where both Kerr and Burchill live. Unable to travel to the UK due to quarantine rules, the album was recorded at Hamburg’s Chameleon Studios. They produced the album there, later enlisting Andy Wright (Massive Attack, Echo & The Bunnymen) and Gavin Goldberg (Simply Red, KT Tunstall) for additional production. The band members, bassist Ged Grimes (who co-wrote two of the new songs, “First You Jump” and “Solstice Kiss”), drummer Cherisse Osei, and vocalist Sarah Brown, joined them on some of the tracks, recording their parts separately in London. Album guests, Sparks’ frontman Russell Mael (“Human Traffic”) and songwriter and former Grimes music partner from Danny Wilson, Gary Clark (“Vision Thing”, “First You Jump” and “Natural”), recorded their respective parts in their home studios.