TME: Few bands manage to stay together as long as the five members of The Fixx. There must be a bond beyond the music.

Curnin: Yeah, there truly is, it’s a deep friendship that’s better than a marriage. We don’t have to sleep together, we get to create together, we’ve grown up together, we look out from our crow’s nest at the world together and we suffer the same things everyone on the planet does together.

TME: One of the songs from “Every Five Seconds” that grabbed me from the first listen is “Lonely as a Lighthouse.” What inspired that song?

Curnin: When I was a little boy my grandfather used to take me down to the shore and we would see a lighthouse on the faraway cliffs. He would say “When a sailor is in trouble, he looks for that light at that lighthouse that comes around every five seconds. He knows if follows that light, it will lead him away from the rocks and safely home to the harbor. That always stuck with me, and I felt that mankind was in kind of a storm right now so we wanted to put this song on the album today. I’ll add that the song was written a few years ago but we never actually recorded it. The momentum to put it on this record came at the very end of the session.

TME: And that’s how you arrived at the title for the album.

Curnin: Exactly, it’s one of the lines in that song. Every five seconds, every human goes through sweeping doubts, optimism, darkness, light, all of those things. It happens in the stroke of a heartbeat, really.

TME: Does The Fixx tend to arrive at the studio with finished songs or do you flesh them out once you’re there?

Curnin: We like to have a basic nucleus of an idea, maybe the lyrics, a chord progression, but it definitely becomes The Fixx sound once we start working together. The main aim of this record was to get in a rehearsal room and capture what was happening as a live backing track so that when we go out on the road now the songs wouldn’t sound too different.

TME: The song “Wake Up” is receiving a lot of attention and has a classic Fixx sound. What inspired that one?

Curnin: I was thinking there is a responsibility to living in a Democratic society and more than just a vote, you actually have to get out there and participate even if it’s just smiling at someone in the street, you are free to do so. Hopefully that smile will ripple around and make people feel like they are a little bit more of a community. We’re feeling so compressed in society right now and chasing the wrong values maybe, so it’s time to wake up.

TME: This interview takes place just before the start of an intense U.S. tour that will keep you guys on the stage here through September. What are you most looking forward to regarding this trek?

Curnin: Seeing the whites of people’s eyes and uniting the room, singing to both sides. That’s what we do best, we’re radical moderates.

TME: Was it difficult being sidelined for so long during the pandemic when it was tricky to even get together in the same room?

Curnin: Yeah, it was excruciating. It’s a shame we weren’t considered essential workers but hats off to those who were, and we’re here thanks to them.

TME: The Fixx did a lot of American television beginning in the 1980s, including shows like “American Bandstand” that some musicians perceived as being corny. Did The Fixx roll their eyes at shows like that? Or did you look at is a chance to reach a new audience?

Curnin: It was all about reaching the new fan. Whether you were selling soap or on a soap opera or on NPR, it didn’t really matter. You knew that once you had a connection with someone on the other side of the screen, you could affect them with your own message really.

TME: Did The Fixx ever have a Spinal Tap moment when something went terribly wrong on tour or some other mishap like we saw the band in that movie endure?

Curnin: Well, knowing that can happen at any moment, we all love and watch Spinal Tap every year as a reminder, it’s like the anti-Bible of rock and roll.

TME: I have high hopes for the forthcoming sequel, but it has a lot to live up to.

Curnin: Yeah, really, I don’t know how you shoot a movie about rock and roll turning 70 but let’s see what happens.