New Simple Minds album, "Walk Between Worlds", set for release 02/02/2018

I do like Sparkle! But its insane Celtic Big Country Rock and Gated Drums on Speed production is so full on it spoils the great toons. I loved the demos and wish Alex Sadkin had produced it, as he was supposed to. But that's my electronic heart singing.

 

No. Wrong. Why do I even bother with the band in that case? Life is too short and lots of fantastic music out there for me. Goes back to this being one of my top 5 bands ever. I still care! I love Neapolis, OSATS and Cry. They can make great music. Just not right now.

 

I guess my own enjoyment of the band overcomes the production approach. Better dynamics would be appreciated, but I can still enjoy the album.

 

Co-co-cocaine? Oh.... that explains why they skipped "Street Hassle"'s heroin verse

Loved the bit in the new Classic Pop interview where Jim talks about drugs and his manager isn't especially pleased about this.

 

He does? Honest Jim. But obviously they ran on speed in the early days and some coke in the mid 80s? I will have to get the mag.

 

Yeah, he suddenly and unexpectedly arrives at the topic

 

I would have been interested in a Sadkin production as well. He did DD, Grace Jones and Arcadia right, SATRT and SRTR have aged very well I think. I like Lillywhite very much but I think they were so concerned about NOT making NGD 2 that some poor decisions were made. He could have intervened if he weren't so coked up at the time. It's hard to tell a band they're making a mistake when you're all crying, hugging and telling each other how much you love them whilst noticing a little bit o whit powder under his nose.

 

I really like a lot of the songs on the new album, but I find it impossible to enjoy listening to it because of the horrible sound quality. I’m trading in my cd copy. It has to be one of the worst mastered albums I’ve ever heard.

 

Just look at Jim back in the days of touring SAF-NGD......not a very natural look. Singer in my own band said he had "the look" back then and made a point of saying it cos' he knew I was pretty much a Puritan when it came to that stuff and he thought it was funny that even my favorite band wasn't clean. I saw them all sharing the reefer outside the Kabuki back in the day and heard it remarked that they were just getting started. Perhaps they were moving on to non-virgin margaritas?

 

My big gripe as stated above. What I do for all such peak limited CDs is to replay gain them on a PC using Audacity. Its free. The replay gain and industry standard is -89db. You do not lose any information, its not compression or lossy. I then copy to a high quality Taiyo Yuden CD-R at 24x using either Audacity or my chosen software, JRiver MC. There is, I find, an ever so subtle softening of the original CD. WBW is far more listenable now. Go on give it a go if you haven't already!

 

Listened to Sparkle on vinyl today. That truly is a sonically challenged album. Wish they could remix it but that ship passed with thee Deluxe set I guess.
The 12'' mixes are better but not much.
My vote for the HIFI SM album goes to Street Fighting Years.

 

Yes I totally agree, SFY is a gorgeously produced, mixed and mastered album. No surprise given the ZTT team of Horn and Lipson pretty much dictated it from start to finish. Listen to the Frankie album - pretty much the exact same dynamic, wide open and epic sound with a lot of subtlety. Massive three dimensional soundstage too. Lots of depth. I love it!

The albums from RTRC to NGD are also brilliantly produced gems. LIAD suffered from a poorly done murky mix, fixed on the 2002 remaster by Heyworth though. But the first press Zoom vinyl sounds fine to me funny enough. Strange one.

SITR is mental. Only a high end system can control the dynamics and full on wall of sound. Even then....but at least the vinyl is not distorted at all. I can play the vinyl on my system and its not overwhelming. Its the digital original and the remasters that are travesties - thin and metallic. Unlistenable. The deluxe is the worst culprit. Hardly any bass or low frequencies I can hear.

 

Yup, have to give it up to Trevor. I'm not a huge fan of the songs on SFY but he turned it into an experience and everything sounds fantastic. Unfortunately the band (or Jim) got the idea that it was a time for an overtly political album and white Mr. Mister type trenchcoats at the time so some of Trevor's great work was obscured in the bombast. I still listen to it frequently just because it sounds so good. Interesting how SFY-Real Life really has that similar change in dynamic you see in FGTH WTTP-Liverpool. That Horn to Lipson trade off is very distinctive. I don't know how to describe it though.

 

I never really got why that era is continously dumped on to this day .
SFY has Belfast Child and Mandela Day and the cover of Biko; the other songs are not that overtly political.
I don't think it has to do with the quality of the lyrics but rather the perceived "pompous" ambition: how dare they try make rock music serious? Come on, back with the eyeliner, Jim. U2 did the earnest thing their whole career but it seems to be OK in their case. Weird.

 

For me it had to do with every song lasting 15 minutes live, all the interludes.....they are my favorite band and I was thinking to myself "Who are these guys?" The long white coats, the presence they had.......it was very "self important". "This Is Your Land" is a political song. I got over it but you have to admit that it hobbled them. I was floored when the US tour was cancelled even though I was going to be in Germany and knew I had a good chance of seeing them. How do you go from sold out arenas in 86 to cancelling in 89?

Whether you or I think it was a political album it seems the masses hath spoken. Whenever I read about the album there's always references to the political tones. I still thought the record was good enough to do well in the states, especially given that the prevailing music was hair metal, De La Soul, Vanilla Ice....etc. They just lost that momentum, kudos for saying what you felt needed to be said.......but you paid one helluva price for it.

 

I remember "SFY" was very well received in German papers, even making "Album of the month" in the - then - highly important Musik Express. From what I remember the backlash didn't start until "Real Life".

If "SFY" isn't well regarded today maybe it has to do with the fact that nothing dates quicker than "political" songs? I needed to revisit it, haven't owned or even heard it since 1992.

 

How very dare they write about politics

 

Looking back i agree with this. My opinion though without Lipson, the album would be a dud. He was the true genius behind the sound.

 

Spot on! And it explains the lunatic speed fuelled songs and aggressiveness. Just listen to Jim screaming his lungs out to a croak. There is no respite. Add then a sudden new found bombast live - c'mon a frikken pole of all things Jimmi lad? - On NGD Jim said that a whisper was as powerful as a scream. Well that didn't last long. Tour Le Monde with a setlist of 10 songs, each dragged and drugged out to Rick Wakemen extremes? Please! For those of us who had been with the band thick and thin since 79, it was excruciating stuff.

And then OUAT. A deliberate shoot for the yankee dollar. I went to 1 gig on that tour in London. Soulless. I came away empty and I never went to see em again until 1990.

SFY was like waking up on a quiet clear morning. Its gentle atmosphere and low key understated righteousness felt comfy in 1989. This is the tail end of Thatcherism in Britain and everyone was political back then over here. It felt of its time and a necessary antidote to the commercial excess of OUAT. But it came 4 years after OUAT. The US market is not their natural home so no surprise the temporary interest in easy listening Yankee soft rock went south. SFY split critical opinion down the middle. 5 star review from Q saying "quietly, gently a landmark arrives" whilst a feisty one from Melody Maker calling it " a big fat fart of an album".

I think the lack of focus, confused state and rockist behaviour during these years - due to the sudden jump into a bigger league - effected and affected the band in every way. And all negatively. Its only in the last few years that Kerr has admitted mistakes were made- in public. And looking forward, that can only be a good thing.

 

Yes agreed. Took an average album to above average heights due to the sonics. Horn and Lipson tend to manage all aspects of records they produce and make. SFY is as much their album. As FGTH's WTTPD is more so. I hadnt listened to it since oohh 1991 until the other day. And my hifi is proper these days so it sounded like a new lush classical audiophile recording! That good.

 

STY was my entry point, and I still find it beautiful and raw and pure. It's expansive and expensive, but I don't hear any pompous stadium rock there and I don't think Belfast Child is a bad song. It's obvious to me they let the "muse" guide them, to the point where they lost a whole continent. Isn't that braver than making a slick, superficially "experimental" album like U2 did (and lo and behold they suceeded in keeping their fanbase)?

The tour was definitely pompous and "rockist" though...all those drawn out endings, not so different from the Tour Du Monde. Just play they song, dudes.

 

The irony is the U2 experimental Hansa krautrock phase had already been well trodden by the Minds! They showed the way to Bongo and co. There is nothing on Achtung Baby, Zooropa or Discoteque thingy that isnt on RTRC recorded in....1979. Or Empires or Sons. Simples.

The shock in that 84-90 period was that the modernist forward looking arty SM somehow felt it needed to walk in U2s shadow, that playing on that field was a good career move. They were doing perfectly fine on their own.

 

Very true. The two bands had opposite trajectories kind of.
Yes, they could have built on the success and musical direction of NGD in a subtle yet commercial manner that would have led to a more sustainable major league career.
Guess someone somewhere is sometimes too ambitious to take balanced decisions. I mean Jim, but who knows, maybe it was Derek!

 

I think yours is a very valid and reasonable point. For me, the album is an old friend.............I loved it when it came out. Everyone around me had soured on them, they were expecting OUAT2 and yes, it was brave. I loved Belfast Child when I first heard it, I thought it was a brilliant move to get Trevor and Stephen. I think the feeling at the time was that they were exhausted after years of touring so they didn't want to work too, too hard at making it sound good.........enter Trevor's team.

My own opinion is that they could have found a middle ground and held much of that US audience. There was some stuff they were knocking around while on tour that sounded pretty good then the idea of making some traditional type of album came out and then you have what you have. I remember reading Jim remarking that Mick had invested a lot in equipment then turned around and made an organ and accordion album or something to that degree. Not sure who the driving force was but we have what we have. The album's great, I could listen to it all day.........it's just not one of my favorites and consensus is that it was the beginning of that downward spiral. I'm sure the grunge thing also played a pretty big part in that.

 

I recall that Real Life was when the critical beatings really started. That was indeed at the advent of grunge.
I read a Swedish music mag review saying they had become "super-zeroes": minus one star rating (Swedes embraced them very early on; you see droves of Sons/NGD albums in the vinyl bins here and this reviewer was clearly an original fan of that era).