Simple Minds - Sacrosanct [Green]

Simple Minds return with Sacrosanct, their first album of new material since 2022's Direction of the Heart, due on green vinyl.

Nearly five decades after forming in Glasgow, the band still revolves around its founding core of singer Jim Kerr and guitarist Charlie Burchill. That partnership is the thread running through everything here, and one track, "Our Secrets Are the Same," shares its name with the pair's joint memoir. It is the sound of two old friends taking stock and still finding plenty to say.

Lead single "Beginner Boys" finds Kerr writing about watching his grandsons grow up, asking how strength, tenderness, courage and gentleness might still belong together. He has described it as more a question than a statement, one he hopes they will spend their lives answering. Titles like "Elysium" and "Jerusalem (State of Mind)" carry the spiritual scale hinted at by the album's name, and "The Next Right Thing" closes the eight-song set.

For a group whose catalogue runs from art-rock experiments to stadium anthems, a late-career album this personal is a welcome turn. The green LP keeps things tight at eight tracks over two sides, exactly the length a single record was made for, and it gives longtime fans a new chapter to sit beside the classics.