Simple Minds - Sister Feelings Call

Sister Feelings Call was a bonus LP sold with part of the initial pressing of 1981's Sons and Fascination. A month after Sons and Fascination was released; Sister Feelings Call was issued in its own right at a budget price. Simple Minds were finally coming into their own and releasing material that was uniquely theirs with Sister Feelings Call being a prime example. "Theme for Great Cities" is a remarkable opening track and one of the finest instrumentals in the band's repertoire. It's truly an amazing piece that is worthy of endless accolades. Seminal, sublime, and stunning. The compelling as well as commercial "The American," is driven by Derek Forbes' hypnotic bassline and made all the more impressive by Charlie Burchill's exquisite guitar solo near the end of the song. "20th Century Promised Land" features some of leader Jim Kerr's better lyrics. The urgent "Wonderful in Young Life" is highlighted by some exceptional drum work courtesy of Brian McGee. "League of Nations," although unique, does sound a little like "Houses in Motion" by the Talking Heads while "Careful in Career" is one of the band's most musically accomplished compositions. The final cut here is another instrumental piece, "Sound In 70 Cities." Sister Feelings Call is a confident and passionate work by a band that has embraced their strengths, and moved past their influences.

Simple Minds - Sons And Fascination

For their fourth album in three years, Simple Minds signed on with Virgin and enlisted Gong's Steve Hillage as producer. The sessions continued the group's impressive run of high-quality output, but there are instances where ambition gets the best of them. Though their work with Hillage hardly spawned anything on a plane with the two albums that preceded it and the one that followed it, it's still a substantial piece of the Simple Minds puzzle. Bridging the art disco of Empires and Dance with the pop masterpiece New Gold Dream, the album falters when the band seems to be reaching a bit too far for their own good. The other stumbling block is Hillage's production: Where the basslines of Empires and Dance snapped and tugged and where the drums hit with brisk smacks and thick thumps, the echo-gauze of the production work diminishes the impact of the band's greatest asset and makes everything sound bigger and busier than necessary. The record isn't without moments of brilliance, like the exquisitely detailed "70 Cities As Love Brings the Fall" (a great balance between grand melodies and bizarre noise), the insistently snaking "In Trance As Mission," and "Sweat in Bullet," which has sparkling keyboard parts and crafty guitar interplay. Aside from these moments, the mind tends to wander and wonder if the band was trying to do too much.

Simple Minds - Real To Real Cacophony

To the delight of some open-minded post-punk fans (fans who also had space for the relatively new, untraditional likes of Devo, Kraftwerk, and Eno in their record collections) the relative simple-mindedness of Life in a Day was blown to bits and left for dead on the pub floor by Real to Real Cacophony, the wide-eyed carnival-like follow-up released only seven months after its predecessor. The artistic leap from Life in a Day to Real to Real has to be one of the most mesmerizing ones imaginable, an improvement that is even more impressive when the short time between release dates is considered. It's where Simple Minds ventured beyond the ability to mimic their influences and began to manipulate them, mercilessly pushing them around and shaping them into funny objects the way a child transforms a chunk of Play-Doh from an indefinable chunk of nothing into a definable chunk of something. Aside from a mercifully brief lapse into aimless murmuring and doodling that occurs during the middle of the record, Real to Real Cacophony is rife with countless bizarre joys. It knocks you on your back with pretentious artsy-fartsiness as instantly as New Gold Dream dazzles with its art pop pleasures, but its challenging melodicism through jerky time signatures and an endless supply of varied sounds and textures keeps you coming back for more. "Real to Real," a sinister rewrite of Kraftwerk's "Radio-Activity," is a good, quick point of reference. Guitars are employed less frequently and are replaced by burbling electronics and further use of keyboard shadings, though the absolute high point of the band's early years, "Changeling," benefits from plangent, angular jabs. The record is certainly as much of an achievement as New Gold Dream; an achievement that's on a plane with other 1979 post-punk landmarks like Metal Box, 154, Entertainment, and Unknown Pleasures.

No kidding.

Simple Minds - Life In A Day

Immediately, there's no real indication of the Glaswegians' past as Johnny and the Self Abusers. Life In A Day – Simple Minds' 1979 debut – owes an undeniable debt to Roxy Music and the David Bowie of Station to Station and Low, mixing curt piano lines and glam rock but also hinting at a sense of fun that would in later years be wiped clear. Chelsea Girl even sounds like the hit that would nevertheless elude them for the next three years.

Simple Minds' astonishingly rapid ascent from humble and derivative post-punk to platinum and transcendent art pop is just as remarkable as the descent that followed it. More remarkable is the fact that a fair portion of the band's fans have such a strict discographic line drawn in the sand (right at the chart-crashing masterpiece that is New Gold Dream) where both sides overlap but don't dare cross. While fans of the band's earlier work essentially drop off with that record (and choose to live in blissful denial that the band existed after that), those on the other end are more or less oblivious to what's on the other side. So what's on that other, earlier side? Five studio albums released within the span of three years. Five studio albums that range from safe to bold, from impenetrable to accessible, from strange to puzzling, and from good to pee-your-pants phenomenal. Life In A Day, the first of the five records released during this fascinating pre-fame period of Simple Minds' career, is easily the least of the first five. Despite the growing pains, this is a skilled and assured assemblage of guitar-heavy post-punk, with Jim Kerr's over-caffeinated voice taking the lead role. The arrangements are full, direct, and sharply executed. The high points: the teeter-tottering title track and the J. Geils Band like swagger (honestly!) of "Someone." The low point: "Pleasantly Disturbed" an epic Velvet Underground inspired limp that lasts eight very long minutes.

Simple Minds - New Gold Dream

The below review was written by the Guardian journalist Peter Walker.

There's a whole PhD thesis to be written on when – and why – good bands turn crap. Perhaps someone's already written it. If so you can only hope Simple Minds' disastrous turnaround features prominently. That the band who slumped to the nadir of Belfast Child had, not so long before, been very good is well documented. Usually the evidence cited is Theme for Great Cities, their almost preternaturally futuristic-sounding instrumental from 1981's Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call double album. Heavily influenced by krautrock, it anticipated large elements of modern dance music and has been sampled dozens of times.

But I'm moving closer to the precipice, to the last decent Simple Minds album. New Gold Dream (or New Gold Dream 81-82-83-84 if you're being pedantic) is so interesting because while you can already see the traits that soon made the band unbearable – overblown melodies, a yearning for pop success, and the essential absurdity of Jim Kerr – on this occasion the result is transcendent beauty. The title track is probably equal best on the album with Someone, Somewhere in Summertime. As well as deeply cryptic lyrics, both songs are underpinned by the band's then-trademark metronomic-yet-fluid rhythm. Contrast this with the thudding, plodding backdrop to Waterfront, lead single for the follow-up album, 1984's Sparkle in the Rain. The song was their first major hit but heralded a new, lumpen Simple Minds, who in pursuit of U2 and world domination shed all that was good about their sound. Before long Kerr had married Chrisse Hynde and they were recording Don't You (Forget About Me).

I always believed the rot coincided with the departure of bassist extraordinaire Derek Forbes, whose flowing style was at the core of the old sound. But no, Wikipedia tells me he left after Sparkle in the Rain. I'll have to wait for the PhD to explain it.