Post-Punk Monk

[…continued from last post]

Of the three songs here that Cherisse Osei played drums on, “Natural” was the clear winner for me. In all cases her drums were fine; it was the songs that either sank or swam. “Natural” managed to stay afloat easily as it was enlivened by a unique sounding guitar tone from Charlie Burchill with distortion doubled on delay from the left channel to the right, delivering a fat sound that contrasted greatly with the synth string patches that were tilted in the direction of Eastern Bloc Romanticism. Pulsating synths and an interesting vocal production on Kerr’s voice had subtle vocoder undercurrents on his delivery. Giving the track a shadowy cinematic vibe that was most welcome for what was a deep cut on this album.

The skittering drum programming heralding the oft-discussed “Planet Zero” gave it an enervated buzz that was unconcerned with playing safe with the song, which had been kicking around the Simple Minds camp for at least eleven years. In 2011, it was due to be recorded in a session with Steve Hillage that ultimately came to naught, sadly. Yet eleven years later, we finally hear the song and it’s still got that something else that made for a great energy burst as the album moved forward to its conclusion.

Charlie’s guitar tone was decidedly avoiding the stadium as he seemed to be investigating his early [excellent] textural vibe; ceding the spotlight instead to the fiery backing vocals from Sarah Brown in full Valkyrie mode as she sang of the “whole world on fire.” It was fascinating to hear his guitar functioning not unlike a didgeridoo in the song. The gulf between the jittery music bed and the calm, centered, and subtle vocals from Jim Kerr made for a fascinating juxtaposition from this band.

Alas, the band had chosen to end the standard album with another cover of the American band, The Call. I have never understood the admiration some have for that band, and Simple Minds had already recorded two different covers of “Let The Day Begin” in 2009 and 2013. To this, we can add what is hopefully the last dip into The Call’s portfolio with the bluster of “The Walls Came Down.” It’s possibly the one song by The Call you may have heard before and it ended the album on a decidedly sour note. Fortunately, Jim Kerr saved his Bonoesque delivery potential for this song; sparing us on the other, far better songs this album had to offer.

The album ended there on LP and standard CD, but we opted for the DLX CD, which came with two more tracks. The first was ostensibly the title track, which rarely gets cut free from the album in practice, but I can recall it happening once before with “Sugar Tax” from OMD which was not on the album of the same name, but instead was a B-side from that period.

“Direction Of The Heart,” had, in fact, begun its life earlier as the B-side to the “Magic” 7″ single bundled with the deluxe version of their last album, “Walk between Worlds.” At the time I thought it was a song of unfulfilled promise; definitely B-side material. After hearing the second try at it included here, it now seems grand in retrospect, because I have never heard anything by Simple Minds that sounded this shockingly amateurish.

It began with a beguiling intro built up slowly that seemed to be just fine, but once the distorted tremolo guitar from Burchill entered the mix like a drunken party crasher, things rapidly devolved from there. The stunningly maladroit vocal effects liberally slathered over the first verse rendered the singing almost completely unintelligible. Who let this out of the basement?! In his defense, there did seem to be a few plug-ins that Charlie forgot to throw into his mix here. At least I hope he mixed it, because I’ve never heard anything this jarringly poor from the hand of nominal mixer Alan Moulder. But don’t just take my word for it, but I’ll warn you that you can’t un-hear it!

After that farrago, how could the minor yet genuine pleasures of “Wondertimes” come up smelling like anything but roses? If I were the sort of person who compiled playlists, I would cut “The Walls Came Down” and end the album with this track, full stop. Astonishingly Ged Grimes [the band’s bass player] and not Burchill played the bass here, but one would be hard pressed to discern the difference by the evidence here.

The first play of this one was a decidedly underwhelming affair. The thing was, for this long-time fan, I’d grown used to small, incremental change and refinement for the better from this band over the last 20 years as a given. I had also always felt that the band were holding their energies back deliberately, so they would always have a strong hand to play later in the game. Which caused me no end of angst over the years. My first listen to “Direction Of The Heart” suggested that maybe that was not the case and they had been pushing hard to move the needle slightly between their last five releases. [we’re not counting the dreaded “Acoustic” album] And that this time they had hit the brick wall and were now [gasp] …backsliding somewhat.

But a single play to base a review on is dangerously thin ice, so of course I found myself playing the album at least 25 times in the period of its arrival and the writing of these thoughts. Eventually its strengths and weaknesses have settled in my mind to give this album its due. I also made sure to review the earlier albums in my listening and admittedly, they still are much more vibrant releases; there’s no denying it.

At its best, this album contains what would be deepcut material for an album like “Graffiti Soul” or “Big Music.” At its worst, it matches the occasional flubs to be found on “Big Music” or “Black And White 050505.” But the area where “Direction Of The Heart” lets me down the hardest is in that if failed to contain any songs of the caliber of “Liaison,” “Stay Visible,” Moscow Underground” or “The Signal And the Noise.” The sort of material which clearly stands with the best Simple Minds have to offer in their illustrious career.

I can’t expect another “Sons + Fascination,” but it has seemed that over the last 20 years that the band have honestly tried to reconnect with their unerring fusion of Art Rock, Disco and Krautrock that marked their imperial period. Just one song of that caliber lifts an entire album. The 5×5 period where they played a tour playing songs only from their first five albums seemed to have re-energized them and had given them a new appreciation for what preceded their stadium years.

In this outing, significantly, I can hear no Krautrock DNA in the mix. Making their appropriation of the “Empires + Dance” backward “N” in the cover logo fraudulent and wrong headed. “Planet Zero” of all the material edged the closest in that regard, but without the underpinning of a suitably motorik drum track, it could not quite reach that standard.

The other burden that this album labored under was simply that it’s 85% the efforts of one man; Charlie Burchill! And his laptop. Sometimes, the results sounded suitably inspired. I can find little fault with cuts like the excellent “Act Of Love” or “Human Traffic.” On the other hand, I can only hope that Burchill was drunk when he put “Direction Of The Heart [Taormina 2022]” to the hard drive. And in between those extremes, there was a lot of what I’d term perfunctory Simple Minds. Certainly better than some performances and songs over the years which could give me hives, but less than inspiring.

Of course, this album was recorded under lockdown, but it hardly differs much from the MO of the band in the last dozen years that sees their live band largely shut out of the recording of the material in any case. Burchill is a guitar player, first and foremost. He’s the pack horse leaned on heavily to make entire albums. In an ideal situation Simple Minds would have a full band to steward their projects. Instead, it’s all down to Charlie. He’s stretched thin. It says a lot that the deluxe booklet had photos of people like Berenice Scott, and Gordon Goudie who play with the band live, and yet their names are entirely absent from the recording and its packaging! Someone new to the band, just picking it up and looking at it, would be rightly confused at exactly who these people were. And therein lies a problem.

At least Ged Grimes got some licks in on the new album. His two tracks are among the better songs here. I’d be interested in seeing how they could work with the great John Leckie again. In self-production they fail as many times as they succeed here. They could use more guidance that only a true producer could give them.

I still find it hard to believe that a strong song like “Vision Thing” [which will pop up in my mind for hours at a time] was saddled with such a bland and middle of the road arrangement and production. Maybe another set of ears would hear the results the same way I did and send them back to the drawing board to give what was obviously a strong song the care and attention that it merited. As an opening salvo it was shot through with weakness where boldness was called for.

And yet, this album, like its much stronger predecessor, entered the UK album charts at an impressive number four. Of course, two weeks later it was off the charts entirely, but that is how legacy acts roll these days. They will never begin to compete with the Sheerans and Swifts who own the charts now. So the band no doubt consider album number eighteen “job well done, lads and lassies!” So I don’t expect that these words will convince them that I think their legacy deserves more.

Jim and Charlie will both be 63 by this month’s end. They are grandfathers. At their stately album every four to five year pace, I would wager that they have one, maybe two albums left in them at this point. They seem calicified in their working methods that see them attempting to write, arrange, and record whole albums by themselves, but a glance at the songwriting credits in the 21st century reveal no shortage of co-writers, largely from outside of the band. The live band are generally used a props but the optics of them being held at arms from the writing process belies the vision of Simple Minds as a band.

When Simple Minds were truly a band, they had vast quantities of rocket fuel to see them chart a spectacular artistic arc unmatched by others. Jim Kerr has revealed that BMG has now bought out their catalog, so Kerr and Burchill are now well-paid troubadors. The engagement with Ged Grimes was encouraging on “Direction Of The Heart” and there’s more where that came from. Here’s hoping they might have the wherewithal to act a little recklessly and consider making Simple Minds a real band again while they still can, and see what magic results.

-30-

[…continued from last post]

It’s strange to hear a Glitterbeat in the middle of a Simple Minds song, but “Human Traffic” didn’t bother asking our permission. The band had pulled this gambit once before on their [second recorded] cover of The Call’s “Let The Day Begin” on 2014’s “Big Music.” And back then it had the effect of making a cover of The Call palatable to these ears! Would it work again here? The sturdy backbeat rhythm, albeit programmed by Charlie Burchill, also had his joyous guitar tone to carry this one aloft. And the high lonesome, cinematic string patches added a certain prairie dignity to the song.

With a title like that one, we would be excused for expecting a political potboiler, but like 2013’s song “Blood Diamonds,” the loaded title was undercut by a radically different lyric to what was expected. This time it was Mr. Kerr’s musing on the day to day ceaseless pace of living, and this was the track where Russell Mael of Sparks sand the choruses with Kerr as a duet of sorts. With him supplying a massed chorus of his dulcet tones. The joy of the song’s tone was palpable and infectious and I enjoyed the mechanical repetition of Mael’s exhortation of “only…only” looped for two bars before the song came to its abrupt halt.

The first seconds of “Who Killed Truth” began in the most wrong-footed way possible as the acoustic guitar strumming of Mr. Burchill coupled with the opening line of “…people coming together” made me think that I had put on a record by mistake. Because that’s the only way it could happen in my home. Once the intro ended and the full sound of the track kicked in at the 0:23 mark, the song eventually found its center in a way that was at least more palatable to my ears. But it was by no means top tier work by the band. Was this an ill-conceived influence of the “Acoustic” period that I’ve done my level best to avoid? I wouldn’t doubt it. Songs like this were part of the reason why I was so seriously down on the conceit of Simple Minds picking up acoustic guitars in the first place.

If the last intro was troubling to my ears, that didn’t even begin to take into consideration the unmitigated gut-punch that the first full minute to “Solstice Kiss” was. We had to endure sixty seconds, of plinking acoustic guitars with the dreaded [sampled] uilleann pipes taking us into Full Celtic Jacket territory. One could practically smell Michael Flatley in the wings as the band seemed to be veering close…dangerously close, to re-living the “Street Fighting Years” vibe that wakes me in the night in a cold sweat.

It’s all the more tragic that once the song begins in earnest at the 0:58 point, we were treated to another Ged Grimes co-write that was a good song that actually seemed to get better as it progressed. And it’s worth mentioning that Grimes was credited here for more instruments than Charlie Burchill! This track goes back a fairly long way. I can swear that I heard Jim Kerr crowing about it after it had just been written on the posts he used to make on simpleminds.com before the horror of social media. It’s telling that there was actually a fourth musician credited on the track! And it was Andy Gillespie who’s been gone from the mothership for five years now.

But this sterling track had much to recommend it, if we were to trim the first 58 seconds from it. Though there was a typically meaty Burchill riff the tune was anchored on right up front, when Jim Kerr began singing he began singing from the most subtle space possible as the synths rippled like raindrops on water all around him in the delicate verses before the chorus erupted in full power. The climax saw vocalist Sarah Brown taking a chorus with the synths riffing under her with brio as the coda wrapped it all up.

Then the initial single “Act Of Love” was introduced into the flow. I thought the single was a great way to commemorate 44 years since their very first gig in 1978. This one was a storming track based on one of the band’s earliest songs given a dust off and dramatic re-boot 4o-some years later. Having heard the original, this new version was easily superior. And for a full-Burchill production, this one fully breaks a sweat and actually provided the jolt that’s often missing from modern Simple Minds. Most of the original lyric was abandoned and that’s no big deal when the results were this great. Alan Moulder’s mix was full of exciting detail and staging that made this one a very brief seeming four minutes of your time.

Next: …Go To Zero

Simple Minds: Direction of The Heart – UK – DLX CD [2022]

1. Vision Thing
2. First You Jump
3. Human Traffic
4. Who Killed Truth?
5. Solstice Kiss
6. Act of Love
7. Natural
8. Planet Zero
9. The Walls Came Down
10. Direction of the Heart (Taormina 2022)
11. Wondertimes

Well, it’s been the requisite four years since the last Simple Minds opus. I really thought that “Walk Between Worlds” was the best album by Simple Minds since “Sparkle In the Rain,” but I could say that about six of their albums over the ’94-’18 period. For the most part, their modern albums reside in a place that I enjoy far better than their stadium period [’85-’93] while acknowledging that there’s nothing they could do to top their initial run of eight albums. Which is my favorite run of albums of all time. How would the new one stack up? Well, I pre-ordered the deluxe digibook and it’s been in house for three weeks as I’ve been busy primarily with the Spoons/Rob Preuss thread. I’ve listen to it many times since and let’s examine how it stacks up against their well-known legacy.

The wispy, insubstantial soft synths that heralded the opener, “Vision Thing,” were shocking in their meretricious flimsiness. They sounded appropriate for a band that had no ties to Post-Punk, much less being a foundational band of that movement. I was shocked at how the new album opened with a gesture that was so middle-of-the-road in an era where in order to capture ears that will swipe the “next button” at almost no provocation demand an all-guns-blazing approach. This sure wasn’t it. Nor were the guitar loops [at least they sounded like loops] that arrived with the drums. There was a mournful guitar line that sounded real buried in the intro that was potentially of interest but Alan Moulder’s mix seemed to be accentuating all of the other elements at its expense.

The arrival of Jim Kerr on the vocals was another sore point as he was delivering his vocals with an affected phrasing and worse still, singsong staccato delivery that had each syllable right on one of the beats. That is not one of my favorite things as I’m a fan of legato singing. This song was not starting out to inspire confidence, but by the time it got to the chorus, it seemed to correct its trajectory somewhat. It was also nice hearing Gary Clark’s distinctive tones on the backing vocals as it’s been long years since I’ve heard him, and I was a big fan of Danny Wilson. But this was a case of a good song being compromised by decisions in sound design, production, and the mix. I find that the song, which was the first pre-release teaser track [can we still call them singles?] manages to stick with me well enough, but it’s a situation where listening to the actual record, instead of my mental Walkman®, put all of the details that I find wanting in sharp relief.

Fortunately, the next track, also a “single,” was a case of “First You Jump” having a much more satisfying heft to its sound; matching the caliber of the song much better. First al all, Charlie was playing guitar with gusto here. Adding his meaty tone to an arrangement that also had Ged Grimes playing bass expressively on the track which he co-wrote with Jim and Charlie. Jim Kerr was back in his vocal sweet spot in his delivery, and indeed, he would be staying there for the rest of the album. Making his odd delivery on the first track an aberration. And Gary Clark’s backing vocals were stout and vigorous here in a way that took this song above the level of perfunctory. I daresay one could slot this track into the flow on “Graffiti Soul” and it would sound right at home. It’s a glorious song with an equally glorious video, shot locally in Kerr’s homebase of Taormina, Italy.

Next: …More Sparks Of Life