Frontman Jim Kerr reports that Simple Minds recently hit the studio to record a batch of tracks — including a new take on a New Gold Dream-era castoff — that are earmarked for both “an extensive compilation” due out in early 2011 and what eventually will become the band’s 16th studio album.
In an update posted to Simple Minds’ website, Kerr writes that the band recently spent four weeks in London recording and mixing four songs, including two new compositions, “Stagefright” and “On the Rooftop,” written by Kerr and band co-founder Charlie Burchill, and “Broken Glass Park,” a song originally written for Kerr’s solo project, Lostboy! A.K.A.
The fourth track recorded was a new 8-minute-long version of “In Every Heaven,” a song that didn’t make the cut for 1982’s New Gold Dream (81, 82, 83, 84) and was used instead as an instrumental B-side to “Someone Somewhere (In Summertime)” under the title “Soundtrack for Every Heaven.” The original vocal take of “In Every Heaven” has only surfaced as a bonus track on 2005’s DVD-Audio reissue of New Gold Dream.
In an interview last month with the U.K.’s Daily Record, Kerr — who currently is in the midst of a Lostboy! A.K.A tour in the U.K. and Europe — offered a hint at what’ll appear on the forthcoming Simple Minds compilation:
“We’re recording new songs as part of a new — but more alternative — greatest hits album. We get a lot of kids coming to our gigs. They don’t know where to start if they’re just getting into our music. We’ll be putting a new compilation together which will include some tracks from early in our career. We unearthed songs which didn’t make it on to albums like Empires and Dance or Sparkle in the Rain.“
Two of the newly recorded tracks — presumably including the new “In Every Heaven” — will be included on the yet-to-be-titled compilation, while the other two, Kerr writes on the band’s site, “are in fact the first tracks for what will eventually become the Minds’ 16th studio album of original compositions, due to be released in ’12.”
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS
- Vintage Video: Simple Minds’ ‘Waterfront’ from 1990’s ‘Verona’ concert film
- Lostboy! AKA: Simple Minds’ Jim Kerr preps debut solo album, sets U.K. club dates
- Video: Death Cab for Cutie’s ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ tribute to John Hughes
- Video: Simple Minds and OMD perform Kraftwerk’s ‘Neon Lights’ together
