At the turn of the century – just let those words sink in for a second – Simple Minds had run out of gas. Their twelfth album, 1999’s Our Secrets Are the Same, didn’t see a proper release for another five years, and even then it was as a bonus disc to a box set of live and unreleased tracks. Their 2001 covers album Neon Lights is the kind of thing that polite people do not talk about in mixed company. With their last US Top 40 hit a decade behind them (“See the Lights,” #40, 1991), and their last Hot 100 appearance over a half-decade ago (“She’s a River,” #52, 1995), Simple Minds was aimlessly adrift. This would explain why singer Jim Kerr decided to open a hotel in Sicily around the same time; even he suspected that he needed a side hustle in case the day job went south.
