Simple Minds

Jim Kerr and fellow Simple Minds have carved out an extraordinarily successful career; over 20 top 20 hits plus three consecutive number one albums in their 80s heyday. Tickets for tonight’s show were a sliver under £50 and sold out months ago. The enduring appeal of this quintessential new wave band is remarkable, helped along by the fact they continue, albeit sporadically, to make decent new music whilst releasing a stream of Greatest Hits and the like. No doubt they, like almost all their contemporaries, are milking it – but this is what they do, and it’s obvious from the stage personas that Kerr et al are enjoying it.

Maybe The Dome brings out the best in bands; touring acts almost invariably enjoy the venue; its character, history and pleasing aesthetics (as well as not being owned by some faceless corporation) must be a pleasure for artists and audiences alike, while the acoustics have improved dramatically over the years. Once upon a time this band played enormo-domes and stadiums, their music increasingly reflecting the nature of those obese stage of dreams, but they’ve been meticulously re-inventing themselves, in particular delving into their early, more experimental albums before fame, fortune and over-wrought musical emotion took over.

With their relatively simple set up of guitar, bass, drums, keys and backing vocalist, Simple Minds sounded very much like their records; tough bass and synth-led tracks from their early days; plenty of glitz and surface sheen since then, with Kerr’s idiosyncratic stage tics and movements very much to the fore. The uniformly plodding nature of much of their later material gradually dulls the senses, but every now and then a rabbit is pulled out such as ‘Waterfront’, which raises the ante and the love for the band. And does much of their ’79-’82 material. Then, as now, the music still sounds fresh, invigorating and creative.

Concert Hall, Brighton Dome, 8 April 2013
Rating:
Jeff Hemmings