Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Udine / Castello di Udine / Italy
Concert date: July 10, 2018
Attendance: 1,500
Ticket price: €46.00
Simple Minds are back on a new tour with a new album in their pocket! A real new studio album, their nineteenth, and “poetically” titled »Walk Between Worlds«. Italy is practically a second home for Simple Minds, since vocalist Jim Kerr has been living there for years. The band keeps up their rock-solid live reliability and fierce determination. A firm, uncompromising live focus. By this July day, when they visited Udine and its enchanting castle facade with the sprawling lawn spread out beneath it, they had already knocked out a hefty run of shows and played numerous European venues presenting the new studio album.
The band seriously shook up the lineup for the new album. They also kept the people who played on it for the new tour. The two main pillars of the group are, of course, still the essential figures of the band’s sound and style. The first is singer Jim Kerr, the second guitarist Charlie Burchill. On bass they kept Ged Grimes, who already has some seniority with Simple Minds, and then they added four more musicians to the crew: guitarist Gordy Goudie, singer and backing vocalist Sarah Brown, who has also worked with the band for years, drummer Cherisse Osei, and Catherine AD, who handles keyboards, guitar and backing vocals. Just like that, Simple Minds grew into a septet, and in the new lineup they can boast no fewer than three women.
Our last encounter with this legendary Scottish new wave band is remembered as a concert generously topped off with downpours that drenched the Arena Alpe Adria in the middle of Italy’s Lignano Sabbiadoro, where the band played on July 29, 2014. Unbelievably, the weather for this Udine show wasn’t any different either. A long, endless line of excited fans snaked toward the castle, all of them dying to meet the band. They were waiting to get in as early as seven in the evening. And somewhere a little after eight, it started to drizzle. At first it was an innocent drizzle, then it slowly grew stronger. By showtime, announced for half past nine in the evening, we were properly getting washed, though thankfully it wasn’t a storm and there was no danger of the sky tearing open. Still, it was just enough to be annoying. If you put your hood up, you couldn’t hear the concert properly. So it was better to be completely soaked than to hear nothing at all. And that happens at a concert that demands exceptional sonic harmony and subtlety. Damn. Simple Minds shows are famous for their sonic perfectionism, where you can hear even a pin drop in the middle of the set.
The band hit the stage at five past nine thirty and, as expected, fired off a track from the freshly released album »Walk Between Worlds« right away. That’s one of its best moments, called Signal And the Noise. The crowd was decked out in anoraks and umbrellas. Used to this kind of rain. Nobody paid much attention to the weather, because the sturdy Glaswegians, with their huge charisma (Jim Kerr), sound, routine, experience and overall stage presence and essence, chased the thought of it away in an instant, and the venue was left with room for only one thing. Positive vibes.
True, the rain and wind were being a nuisance and occasionally carried the sound away, which showed a few times on Charlie Burchill’s less audible guitar, but on the other hand Simple Minds once again fired up the Italian crowd so much that they ate out of the band’s hands, as if they’d bet on it. »Walk Between Worlds« is an excellent new studio achievement for the band, one you could say is basically a classic Simple Minds album. Let’s be honest. The band used some ideas that were born back in the eighties and nineties, but like its predecessor »Big Music«, it has an outstanding danceable character and rhythm. The new album’s material works brilliantly alongside the band’s classics, which were represented by the magical, hypnotic Waterfront, then Let There Be Love, followed by another Real Life classic, See the Lights, the solemn Mandela Day, the commanding She’s A River, and the infectious romantic summer story Someone Somewhere in Summertime… A lovely surprise came with the inclusion of the title track from the Simple Minds album “Once Upon A Time” (1985), so together with the notorious, obligatory live favorites (Ghost Dancing, Sanctify Yourself, Alive And Kicking and All The Things She Said), we heard as many as five songs from that album! Kerr left the vocals to Sarah Brown for two numbers and slipped backstage to rest his vocal cords for a bit. Those were the The Call cover Let The Day Begin and the beautiful ballad Dolphins. Sarah did a great job, but Dolphins works completely differently with Kerr on vocals. It hits just right. Very “Simple Minds”.
In the grand finale the band played New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84), as expected, and the universally anticipated monster hit Don’t You (Forget About Me), which closed the regular set, and it was easy enough to predict the encore of the missing hits, which Simple Minds opened with Alive and Kicking and closed the show with Sanctify Yourself.
Jim Kerr glanced up at the sky a few times during the show and told the crowd it rains all the time in Glasgow anyway, trying to put everyone at ease, but nobody was losing sleep over it. Kerr had no trouble re-establishing that incredible magical connection with the audience, and it never let up all night. Not only does he speak decent Italian to the crowd, but his stage presence, the constant dance steps and movements, fired people up so much that they kept the band and the atmosphere flying high. The Simple Minds magic shone once again in all its intensity. Unforgettable, one of a kind and, until we meet the band again, simply unrepeatable.
Setlist
1. The Signal and the Noise
2. Waterfront
3. Let There Be Love
4. See the Lights
5. Sense of Discovery
6. Mandela Day
7. She’s a River
8. Someone Somewhere in Summertime
9. Walk Between Worlds
10. Summer
11. Once Upon a Time
12. All the Things She Said
13. Dolphins
14. Let the Day Begin (orig. The Call)
15. New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)
17. Don’t You (Forget About Me)
—encore—
18. Alive and Kicking
19. Sanctify Yourself
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