location: Udine / Castello Di Udine / Italy
date: 10.07.2018
Simple Minds are back on tour with a new album in their pocket! Brand-new studio album, their nineteenth, poetically titled “Walk Between Worlds”. Italy is basically a second home for Simple Minds, since frontman Jim Kerr has lived there for years. Simple Minds keep up their unshakable live game and razor-sharp determination. Solid, uncompromising concert focus. By the time they reached this July day in Italian Udine, with its enchanting castle facade overlooking a sprawling green lawn, they’d already put in a serious run of shows and played plenty of European venues presenting the new studio album.
The band thoroughly shook up the lineup for the new album, and kept the people who played on it for the new tour too. The two main pillars are still, of course, the essential figures behind the group’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 history with Simple Minds, and then brought four more musicians into the fold: 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 boast no fewer than three women.
Our last meeting with this legendary Scottish new wave band is remembered as a show generously enriched with rainfall that drenched the Arena Alpe Adria in the middle of Lignano Sabbiadoro, Italy, where the band played on 29.07.2014. Unbelievable, but this time in Udine the weather wasn’t any different. A long, endless line of fans snaked toward the castle, barely able to wait to meet the band. They were waiting to get in as early as shortly after seven in the evening. And a little past eight it started to drizzle. At first the drizzle was innocent, but then it slowly picked up. By the time the show was due to start at half past nine, we were properly soaked, though luckily it didn’t smell like a real storm or like the sky was about to burst. Just enough to be annoying, though. If you covered up with a hood, you couldn’t hear the show well. So it was better to be completely soaked than to hear nothing at all. And that happens at a show that demands exceptional sonic precision and subtlety. Damn. Simple Minds shows are famous for their sound perfectionism, where you can hear a pin drop mid-concert.
The band hit the stage at five past half nine 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 in anoraks and under umbrellas. Used to this kind of rain. Nobody paid the rain much attention, because the staunch Glaswegians, with their giant charisma (Jim Kerr), their sound, routine, experience and sheer stage presence and essence, chased the thought of it away in an instant, leaving room at the venue for just one thing. Positive vibes.
True, the rain and wind messed with things and occasionally blew the sound away, which showed a few times in Charlie Burchill’s guitar being less audible, but on the other hand Simple Minds once again fired up the Italian crowd so much that it ate out of the band’s hand, as if on a bet. “Walk Between Worlds” is an excellent new studio achievement from the band, one you could call a classic Simple Minds album. Honestly. They used some ideas that were born back in the eighties and nineties, but like its predecessor “Big Music”, it has an outstanding dance 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 story of the summer, Someone Somewhere in Summertime… A lovely surprise was the inclusion of the title track from the Simple Minds album “Once Upon A Time” (1985), so together with the notorious, must-play favorites (Ghost Dancing, Sanctify Yourself, Alive And Kicking and All The Things She Said), we got a whopping five songs from that album! Kerr handed the vocals over to Sarah Brown for two numbers and slipped backstage for a while to rest his vocal cords. Namely for the cover of The Call’s Let The Day Begin and the gorgeous ballad Dolphins. Sarah did a great job, but Dolphins just works differently with Kerr on vocals. It hits the way it should. In a proper “Simple Minds” way.
In the big finale the band played New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84), as expected, plus the universally anticipated monster hit Don’t You (Forget About Me), which closed the regular set, and it was pretty easy 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 that it rains all the time in Glasgow anyway, trying to calm everyone down, but people weren’t losing any sleep over it. Overall, Kerr had no trouble re-establishing that incredible magical connection with the audience, which never let up throughout the show. Not only does he speak decent Italian to the crowd, but his stage act too, with those constantly maintained dance steps and moves, fired up the audience so they kept the band and the atmosphere flying high. The magic of Simple Minds once again shone with full intensity. Unforgettable, one of a kind and, of course, until we meet the band again, unrepeatable.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
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
