GяEaT MiИdS

Before the bombast and bluster of Waterfront and its parent album Sparkle In The Rain, before Don’t You Forget About Me‘s omnipresence in top tens the world over, before they looked to the tiered arenas of the American midwest and long before they’d even thought about possibly considering property investments in Tuscany, Simple Minds made sonically-interesting and stubbornly European music; cold, glacial and filmic, music that suggested movement and travel by Eastern European train rather than by air conditioned limo the length of the Eastern Seaboard. Even their pseudo Cyrillic logo at the time, all thin and sparse and fat-fee, was a nudge-nudge wink-wink to the twin influences of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War. Those reversed Rs. The backwards Ns. Ask James Dean Bradfield about it the next time you see him.

As much as Simple Minds became a great Scottish export around the mid ’80s, it’s those earlier records where, for me, the magic really happens. Indeed, as the switched-on amongst us know, early Simple Minds was where it was truly at. That band, that line-up, that creative vision, not to mention the inspired choice of producers – John Leckie! Steve Hillage! –  has a rare essence about it that makes those great, danceable post-punk records sound futuristic still, even 40 years on.

Simple Minds – Theme For Great Cities

The eerie keyboard motif that signifies Theme For Great Cities’ start is all over those Minds’ records from the era. Part Eno and part Magazine’s Dave Formula, it’s the singular instrument that hints at melody and song form in the band. Married to a punchy rhythm section, it made for a spatial and atmospheric sound, a sound that was unmistakeably Simple Minds.

Theme For Great Cities is the perfect example of the group, the juddering bassline and whip-smart electro backing conjuring images of speeding landscapes as you rattle through foreign lands. The band is precision-perfect in timing, metronomic and pinpoint in accuracy. Even Charlie Burchill is in on the act. He plays almost not one chord, almost not one sustained note. The disciplined post-punker that he is plays the track’s scratchy rhythm almost the entire time without so much as a tendon-resting break. Nile Rodgers in eye liner, he breaks free at one point to simply crash a minor chord with all the charm of a glass bottle being smashed against a wall, then slips into a little effect-heavy sustained glissando before once again taking up the chicken scratch. Arty? Yep. European? Yep. Roxy Music if played by Glaswegian tenement kids? Yep. It’s a beauty. That well-worn cliche about an old record sounding like it could’ve been recorded yesterday rings true with Theme For Great Cities.

Likewise This Earth That You Walk Upon.

Simple Minds – This Earth That You Walk Upon

It’s so disciplined, so ethereal, it might’ve launched itself straight from The Orb’s mixing desk in 1993. Its pitter-pattering drum machine springs to mind Sly Stone, but where Sly would close-mike himself and drawl coolly about baybees makin’ baybees, Simple Minds smother the pitter-patter in a soundscape of treated electric guitar and thumping slapped bass, synth washes and echo-laden keyboards. Spacey and flotation tank-light, This Earth That You Walk Upon is a bit of a year zero for the electro acts that would follow.

In movie making terms, the trajectory of Simple Minds is a bit like your favourite art house director foregoing the grit and grain of monochrome and throwing their lot in with the surround sound and widescreen epicness of the Hollywood blockbuster studio set. There’ll still be good bits in the movies, but as a whole, they’re too crowd pleasing and calculated. In the old days, the creatives at the helm knew the cost of nothing and the value of everything. When they make that move into the big leagues, the bottom line becomes the single most important factor, and undoubtedly the music suffers as a consequence. Thankfully, we can go back any time we like. Outdated music for outdated people? You bet it is.