A Certain Ratio: ‘I think there was a feeling we had more music in us’

“We don’t actually discuss much,” chuckles the bass player and singer, “but I think there was a feeling we had more music in us; it was just a question of having the outlet to release that music.”

He recalls a previous hiatus back in 1992 following the death of their then manager and record label boss Rob Gretton, adding: “If another label had been around I’m sure we would have carried on.”

Where Soul Jazz Records’ reissues of the Manchester post-punk band’s back catalogue had sparked their 2008 artistic rebirth Mind Made Up, this time impetus to make what would become ACR: Loco came from the Mute label who in 2019 released a career-spanning box set.

“It gave us the impetus again to think, ‘We’re generating some funds now, maybe we could buy some studio time for ourselves and record an album and see who wants to put it out’. So we did, and Mute happily and kindly decided they wanted it.”

The melange of styles on the album is, says Kerr, “a reflection of all the things we’ve done” over a 43-year history that took the band from Factory Records to various labels including A&M and Creation to the current renaissance. “If you watch (Michael Winterbottom’s 2002 Factory Records biopic) 24 Hour Party People you realise nothing was ever planned, and the same goes with us,” he says. “I think that’s the way it works best.

“A lot of the stuff on Loco was written in the studio. We did a lot of jamming at the start of last year, we started going in every other weekend and laid down some grooves, and before Christmas we came back to all these ideas and started to finished them off. It wasn’t that we said, ‘That’s that sort of tune and that’s that sort of tune’, it’s just the way it happened.”

If compiling the box set had reminded Kerr and bandmates Martin Moscrop and Donald Johnson that they had embraced everything from post-punk to funk, disco, acid jazz and techno over the years, reworking songs by the likes of Barry Adamson, The Charlatans and Maps gave them an appetite for collaboration. They found Manchester luminaries such as Mike Joyce of The Smiths, Gabe Gurnsey of Factory Floor and Eric Random willing accomplices on Loco.

“All the people that are involved in it are ACR fans, these are people that we’ve known or worked with in the past and they were all happy to be involved,” Kerr explains.

One person tragically missing from the album’s launch is the singer Denise Johnson, who died in July aged 56. Kerr says ACR felt the loss of their longtime collaborator and friend “personally and professionally”. “It’s a massive shock,” he says. “Denise was the youngest in the band and the strongest personality. When we played gigs she was the one who had that connection with the audience. She was such a warm, friendly person. It’s devastating, I don’t know how we’re going to come back from it, but you just carry on, don’t you?”

Johnson’s voice can be heard on four songs on Loco, but Kerr reveals there are more tracks that they’d been saving for the next ACR album. His favourite memory is “having a laugh with her”. “It was the everyday things, she was such fun,” he recalls. “That’s what I miss most, just laughing with her, those were the best times. Also every gig was great. Last year we played more gigs and we’d got on a roll, when you get into that mode it develops into something a little bit more.

“We were really getting it together and looking forward to the new album and then suddenly we have Covid and then Denise dies.

“I know it’s hard for everybody, this Covid thing is decimating our own little industry. Small venues, young bands, that’s what it’s really killing. People who are a bit bigger will probably survive, but I think a lot of these places won’t survive and it will be difficult for them to come back.”

This year marks the 40th anniversary of A Certain Ratio’s breakthrough indie hit Shack Up. Kerr remembers: “Doing Shack Up was great. We recorded it in Prestwich. The four-track studio was on Church Lane and we recorded Shack Up, Do The Du and the studio side of The Graveyard and the Ballroom there. Tony Wilson was supposed to be producing us, but it was actually the engineer.

“Tony was a massive influence on us, we were his band really to start with. He got some money when his mother died and with that he took us to New York to record. He wasn’t a manager, he was a romantic, really.”

ACR launch their album with an online Evening With... event on Friday September 25. Kerr says: “They’re showing some of the Warehouse gig from last year...and the stuff we recorded at Hope Mill, which is the new album, it’s really intimate, it’s got a special quality about it, then there’s a Q&A and a DJ set.”

ACR: Loco is out on Friday September 25. www.acrmcr.com