Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Simple Minds
Label: Virgin Records
Release: 2012
Running time: 138:07
Rating: 5/5
The time comes… You simply buy it for yourself. To enjoy the fruits of what you sowed in days gone by. Like a gentleman. In grand style. With the strict aim of pure pleasure and fun. And you decide to share all of it with your devoted fans. With fifteen studio albums in your pocket and a career that’s been riding big commercial success almost since 1977. Ladies and gentlemen, Simple Minds.
In 2011, the guys came up with the idea of playing only songs from their first five albums live. That wish was confirmed by the announcement of a new tour called »5×5 Live« for the last third of November 2011. Since the folks at EMI Records like to make a nice bit of money along the way, in spring 2012 they put out a special box of six CDs holding the band’s first five studio records. Damn. Five albums, six discs. Something doesn’t add up. The albums »Life in a Day«, »Real to Real Cacophony«, »Empires and Dance« and »New Gold Dream (81–82–83–84)« each get their own disc, while »Sons and Fascination« and »Sister Feelings Call« are now split across two discs, which makes six in total. »Sons and Fascination« and »Sister Feelings Call« originally came out together in 1981 as a double vinyl, later on a single CD, so the release counts as the fourth studio album. One album, then.
These albums, we can say, carry massive weight for the period around the turn of the seventies into the eighties, for the development, or rather the gradual molting, of punk through electro-synth rhetoric into a unique rock culture with new wave sonic traits, which soon earned Simple Minds a reputation as one of the post-punk pillars of the scene. Simple Minds’ arrival as one of the leading post-punk rock outfits brought rock music a real little mini-revolution right in this period, opening up new musical horizons that inspired many younger bands to pick up that sound and carry it into their own musical vocabulary.
It’s an ambitious move for the leading Scottish band of the new wave / post-punk movement, today regarded as sages of the unique art rock tradition, to decide to play five songs from each of the first five albums on every date of a European tour, running between 14.02.2012 and 04.03.2012. That’s 25 songs per night in total. Across the two CDs there are thirty songs altogether, which means the discs carry five extra tracks, since the live set differed a touch from night to night.
Old songs in a new, more mature, refreshed and updated variety. Not in the arrangements. Just a more mature coloring of the existing form of the arrangements, as we know them from the studio releases. Simple Minds are a quintet. Five building blocks of sound. Five entities. The contrasts between them are equally exposed and sharply drawn, and in the end they add up to an exceptionally rich sonic backdrop, an exceptional use of the soundscape. It’s cut strictly the »Simple Minds way«. Placing short, simple, yet fully effective musical solutions that, in their starting minimalism, reach the optimal range of expression on the »less is more« principle.
Over all the decades of their existence, Simple Minds have hardened into exceptional musicians and an exceptional live band, which today is undeniably renowned for delivering the greatest sonic perfection any gig by any band can conjure up. When Burchill’s »white Gretsch falcon« (Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson uses a similar one) cuts into the sophisticated placement of notes through a viciously wound-up sustain effect, backed by Andy Gillespie’s sailing across synthesizers in that typical eighties sound, and you give yourself over to Mel Gaynor’s cannon-like leadership of decisive rhythms, often spun into dance rotation, balanced by Ged Grimes’ stocky, rugged rattle of bass lines, and then, like the cherry on top of a fruit sundae, Jim Kerr’s vocal show joins in, the live encounter with the musical stature of Simple Minds becomes fatal. You can only love them (or hate them). There’s no middle ground. Their musical character is that recognizable and self-made. The centroid of this story is of course the vocal figure of the one and only Jim Kerr, who matures with the years like good old wine. The man needs no accommodations in the form of lower tuning for the instruments that make up the backdrop to his voice, no special effects to hide behind. No tricks to »spare« himself by getting the crowd to sing while he deliberately saves energy in such parts of the stage show. His voice simply carries, in full radiance, the most elemental thing that lures the listener into a one-of-a-kind adventure with the music of Simple Minds. Passion and emotional charge. And over the years, those two elements only deepen in Kerr, reaching an even greater effect through interpretation and taking hold in an even more contagious way. Kerr is outstanding. An erotic voice, in places slipping into a falsetto of whispered narration, and as such he generously floods the room throughout with a finely tuned sense of bringing the chosen emotion to life, as dictated by the message of Simple Minds’ music.
The songs are mixed up across both discs. They don’t follow chronological order. The feeling that the band is thoroughly enjoying playing songs they hadn’t touched for decades before this tour is incredible. You can’t escape it. It grabs you instantly with its genuine nature and authenticity. Everything works perfectly on this live document. Without mincing words, the songs crawl under your skin far more intensely than the atmospheric reach of the studio originals ever managed.
»5×5 Live« is a live masterpiece that only a mature enough band can produce, one that functions as one in its mission and where the symbiosis of the building blocks of its musical culture is, so to speak, perfect. While these lines of yet another review are being written, Simple Minds have put out a new compilation album titled »Celebrate: The Greatest Hits«, in a box similar to the »X5« box, with two brand-new songs, and they’ve confirmed a new British tour, to be followed by a new European one, and from there they’ll head off to yet another continent. And there’s no way the expectations from the band’s fans for a new live document aren’t entirely justified. Given the exceptional form of Simple Minds radiating from the manifesto called »5×5 Live«, it’s clear that now is the right time for such a move! It’s hard to find this kind of live sophistication on a concert document, in terms of creating exceptional sonic contrasts between the five building blocks of a musical culture, firing in such full-on fashion! Simple Minds are simply capable of it!
Those of you who are more »modest« and just »curious«, as well as those who are missing the band’s early studio albums, know that« 5×5 Live« is the perfect patch for the gaps in your CD collections. And if Simple Minds serve up one more live album, dedicated to performing the »Greatest Hits« repertoire, you won’t have to miss the missing studio albums or the »best of« compilations at all anymore.
Line-up
Jim Kerr – vocals
Charlie Burchill – guitar, keyboards
Andy Gillespie – keyboards
Ged Grimes – bass
Mel Gaynor – drums, percussion
Production
Simple Minds
Track list
CD 1:
1. Intro
2. I Travel
3. Thirty Frames A Second
4. Today I Died Again
5. Celebrate
6. Life In A Day (bonus track)
7. Calling Your Name
8. Scar
9. King Is White And In The Crowd
10. Hunter And The Hunted
11. Wasteland (bonus track)
12. Love Song
13. This Fear Of Gods
14. Pleasantly Disturbed (bonus track)
15. Room
CD 2:
1. The American
2. 70 Cities As Love Brings The Fall
3. In Trance As Mission
4. Sons And Fascination
5. Sweat In Bullet
6. Changeling
7. Factory
8. Big Sleep
9. Premonition
10. Promised You A Miracle
11. Someone Somewhere In Summertime
12. Theme For Great Cities
13. Glittering Prize
14. Someone (bonus track)
15. Chelsea Girl (bonus track)
16. New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)
