NUMBERS WEEK (MARCH 14-20, 2011)
Note: this release was originally purchased as a LP (gold vinyl with purple swirls!), later replaced by a CD.
Even though they wouldn't hit it big for a few more years, Simple Minds put out some of their best work in this 1982 release. This album was my first exposure to the band. Before they became an all-out pop/rock band, they were a moody British synth group, producing lush, layered songs and dance tracks (think of a more popish Roxy Music). This may border on blasphemy, but I think U2 totally ripped off this album when they recorded The Unforgettable Fire.
Press of the time:
- Billboard: "at its most inspired, the music lives up to its contents' lofty spiritual themes"
- Rolling Stone (★★★): "has charms to suck you into deep, private reveries"
- Smash Hits (8 out of 10): "A very musical record, if we're allowed to say that."
- Robert Christgau (C+): "Auteur Jim Kerr is Bowie sans stance, Ferry sans pop, Morrison sans rock and roll. He says simple, I say empty and we both go home."
- Trouser Press: "nine leisurely cuts swathed in a hyper-romantic approach."
- Record Mirror: "an aural feast"
Album chart peaks:
- US Billboard Top 200: #69
- CashBox: #86
- Rolling Stone: #32
Tracks: I was first grabbed my the album's single, Promised You A Miracle, but my favorite cut on the album quickly became the instrumental Someone Up There Likes You. I recently heard the fantastic title track used at the beginning of the horrible 2009 movie, The Informers. While the movie was bad, the opening montage and the use of New Gold Dream was perfect. Don't waste your time on the movie, but I'm sure you can find the opening credits on YouTube. Other good songs are Colours Fly And Catherine Wheel, Someone Somewhere In Summertime, and Hunter And The Hunted, which has an amazing solo from Herbie Hancock (how he got on this album is anyone's guess, but his work totally fits). I don't care much for Big Sleep or King Is White And In The Crowd.
Personal Memory Associated with this CD: I'm pretty sure I bought my LP copy at a Sound Warehouse record store in Austin during a trip there in March of 1983. My friends Jim and Scott went to see Simple Minds in concert in Houston (The Call opened) around this time and brought me a concert shirt (sleeveless, of course). I wish I had kept that shirt. Not that it would still fit me, but just for sentimental reasons.
Stay, I'm burning slow
ReplyDeleteWith me in the rain, walking in the soft rain
Calling out my name
See me burning slow
Brilliant days, wake up on brilliant days
Shadows of brilliant ways will change all the time
Memories, burning gold memories
Gold of day memories change me in these times
Somewhere there is some place, that one million eyes can't see
And somewhere there is someone, who can see what I can see
Just listened to this song out in the rain and came here to see review.
If Kerr & Co. ever produced a song as great as "Someone Somewhere In Summertime", I've yet to hear it. It is soft, shimmering, hazy and moody. The lyrics are inscrutable for the most part but I hear faith, hope and emotion. Just thinking about it makes me want to hear it again. I'll be back.
So, so good. Pulled up the Extended Verison this time around. It's one of those rare songs that doesn't trigger a memory but rather just washes over me as if I had been touched by an angel or the Big Guy himself. "Someone Somewhere In Summertime" is my gospel, my hymn, a song that speaks to my soul.
Makes sense that is from the Class of 1982, the single greatest year in pop music history. And your assertion about U2 cribbing the sound of this album for An Unforgettable Fire appears to be right on the money:
"U2 has been listening to New Gold Dream by Simple Minds as a point of reference, a record they liked. The panorama of the ambiance appealed to them." - Daniel Lanois