Forty six years into a career that’s seen the Glaswegian Art Rockers try a little but of everything, as of 10:35 this morning one can no longer say that The Minds haven’t had the very modern feather in their caps of the surprise album drop. Simple Minds fandom has been abuzz with the sudden appearance of their new all-cover album, “There’s A Heart Here: Simple Minds Sing The Michael Been Songbook.”

It’s no secret that the bonds between America’s heartland Art Rockers The Call and Simple Minds have been thick as thieves for nearly 40 years when The Call famously opened up for Simple Minds 1986 tour on their top selling “Once Upon A Time” album. The band have not been strangers to the Michael Been catalog in the last 20 years. In 2009 they covered “Let The Day Begin” on their second album of covers in the new millennium, “Searching For The Lost Boys.” It was given a quick and dirty 3:03 workout as the band were recording the covers they picked for that album as a fun warm-up exercise.

When we saw the band in 2013 on their brief but potent US tour with our friends chasinvictoria and Echorich, the band served up an incredible set where they gave us the gift of “Let The Day Begin,” much to my friend Echorich’s delight. Then two years later, for their “Big Music” opus of 2015, the band once more had another go at getting the magic of “Let The Day Begin” down. This time in an even longer 5:10 version that played out like an extended 12″ remix of the song; complete with a galloping, Glam Rock beat.

But this time the band aren’t leaving anything to chance. “There’s A Heart Here” features the band’s unprecedented third version of “Let The Day Begin,” and this time it’s in a cinematic production mix by beloved widescreen remix genius Johnson Somerset! As Jim Kerr put it in a recent interview, “You know, we have the greatest of respect for Johnson Somerset…he can take a five minute song and re-spin it into a twelve minute epic that sounds like nothing you’ve done… but wish you had! We felt bad for having two earlier tries at “Let The Day Begin” as we were huge fans of Michael Been and having felt that we were maybe kind of going through the motions at first. Seeing as how were almost unworthy charlatans next to his artistic levels. So we thought let’s redeem ourselves and have one more try at capturing the magic of “Let The Day Begin” and have Johnson Somerset produce it. And he’s encouraged us to really take flight with it!”

“The song is now eighteen minutes long and let me just say that we tried to make every minute count! I’d like to think that this time it’s “third time lucky” on “Let The Day Begin!” We’ve finally cracked that case… big time!” And fortunately for fans of compelling music, Somerset has produced the entire “There A Heart Here” album. Naturally, this means that the songs are all fairly long[ish] with the shortest being the 6:45 version of “Like You’ve Never Been Loved” from The Call’s under appreciated 1990 opus “Red Moon.”

And “Let The Day Begin” isn’t the only instance of Simple Minds double dipping in the Michael Been catalog, as Kerr quipped, “of course we just covered “The Walls Came Down” on our last studio album, but at 3:47 we felt a little…well…embarrassed at how we didn’t give it the substance that it obviously deserved. So it’s the centerpiece of the second disc in a 13:38 version that Johnson urged us to record. We’d be in the big studio room considering winding it down maybe after the 277th bar…thinking ‘maybe this has played out,’ but we’d catch Johnson with that magic glint in his eye at the boards, egging us on, and we just knew that we’d be shortchanging ourselves, the memory of Michael Been, and our fans if we didn’t give every last ounce of effort to the song.”

Maybe the astute among us also noticed that Mr. Kerr had slipped out that, yes, there’s a second disc of Call [and solo] material coming out way! This was partly a function of Jim + Charlie’s unbridled enthusiasm for the songs of Michael Been but also the fact that with Johnson Somerset producing, all of the songs were of prodigious length. This necessitated making the album the band’s first double album since “Searching For The Lost Boys” was added to deluxe editions of “Graffiti Soul.”

But as Kerr puts it, “that’s not really the case, since that album was intended to be two fairly separate things that were just bundled together. Even “Sons + Fascination” and “Sister Feelings Call” were eventually split up into two separate albums. What makes “There’s A Heart There” special is that it was always intended as one huge package of the magical songs of Michael Been. So it’s two CDs of material. But they are jam packed; 78 and 82 minutes long! We’ve got this mastering engineer who can bypass the Red Book 74 minute CD limit by stripping out some of the fiddly encoding that’s there, yet no one hears in the music to make these discs as long as physics…and our devotion to the majesty of these songs, will allow.”

So basically, this will be Simple Minds “Sandinista!” equivalent! With all of the music being issued on two CDs…or also in a deluxe 4 LP set of 180g Eco-Jazz™ 100% recycled vinyl. So it’s actually one whole album of music longer than “Sandinista!” Except with fewer songs. Let’s have a look at that amazing lineup of material.

Simple Minds: There’s A Heart Here: Simple Minds Sing The Michael Been Songbook – UK – 2xCD [2024]

Disc One

1. Everywhere I Go – 7:13
2. Like You’ve Never Been Loved – 6:45
3. Become America – 8:34
4. Let The Day Begin – 18:12
5. Now I Know High [Pt. 2] – 17:42
6. Blood Red [America] – 7:33
7. This Is Your Life – 8:27
8. Apocalypse – 7:08

Disc Two

1. The Walls Came Down – 13:38
2. Terrible – 6:55
3. Turn A Blind Eye – 9:17
4. War Weary World – 14:12
5. Sanctuary – 8:03
6. Flesh + Steel – 9:25
7. World On Fire – 11:33
8. Terrible – 9:04

As we said, the album is available today and the band are doing their part to support independent record stores since the package will only be available in physical record stores. No online sales. No streaming. Just old school magic for every minute of the package. As their 27th album in a long career is now ready for the public ear, did Kerr have any final thoughts on the experience?

“Only regret that it took us this long to even begin scratching the surface on this catalog of material, but now that we’ve got the pump primed, so to speak, there’s no reason why we couldn’t knock out a “Part Two” in the next five years, if we apply ourselves, that will really have the fans going! That…and maybe the fact that the ladies balked at the beards. At first.”

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