Simple Minds - Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call
#455
By Aaron Conte
September 12 1981
Simple Minds
Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call
Genre: early modern new wave
Allen’s Rating: 4 out of 5
Aaron’s Rating: 3 out of 5 clubs
Highlights:
In Trance as Mission
70 Cities as Love Brings the Fall
Theme for Great Cities
20th Century Promised Land
Simple Minds find The Cure when Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy while Selling England By the Pound. I think it would have been amazing to get drunk with Jim Kerr, Robert Smith, Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel back in 1981. If you have ever wondered what that would be like, just put on this hour and a half record. First of all, it plays through like a concert. Great sequencing. No one can vamp on a riff like Simple Minds.
I'm going to side-step the "forgetting about" them jokes or any crap like that, except to say that, yes, that is how I discovered Simple Minds; by way of The Breakfast Club. After that I went out and found "Sparkle in the Rain" and played it over and over again. That really turned me on to what they could deliver. Unfortunately commercial radio then chose the movie song, and followed up with "Alive and Kicking", "All the Things She Said", and "Sanctify Yourself". Not really my cup of tea or glass of scotch.
This album does mix many ideas that in the end come out sounding great. Long-ish songs (nothing clocks in at less than three and a half minutes) average length four and half minutes, all fly by with gleaming melodies and some great pounding beats. One thing Simple Minds always had going for them was a kick-ass drummer and both Brian McGee who plays on this record and Cherisse Osei who plays with them now are no exception.
This is in many ways a double album. From what I could gather, Sons and Fascination and Sister Feelings Call are two separate albums that were recorded in the same session yet released at the same time (and usually as a double album). How very Scottish.
At times, there are elements of early Cure, Eno, and Gabriel era Genesis. All winning combinations in my book. In fact, I'd venture to say I even heard some Falco/After the Fire keyboards at any given moment. Simple Minds is what Roxy Music would have become if Eno stayed in the band.
This album is a commitment. Like I mentioned, a double album of really great sounds and songs, but you really have to be a seeker I think to give it a go. There are indeed moments of wandering, meandering melodies and sound mix ups, but the beats always come in to hang on them in a way that strikes your ear and keeps you listening. Then there's always Jim Kerr's voice. A very real baritone of youth and wild abandon. In fact, rock record listening aside, what's fun is to go on YouTube and dial up "Scottish vocabulary, accent, culture and slang!" Then put on the record (or records) again and try to figure out what he's talking about.
https://open.spotify.com/album/5k8fqMlPpMFxHUGyfnaRON?si=PpRb-CIOSbeGxQeW29CzWA
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