Simple Minds - Black and White 050505
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Artist: Simple MindsEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Enhanced, Import
Published: 2005-09-06
CD Release Date: 2005-09-19
Music Label: MSI:SANCTUARY
Soundtracks:
- Stay Visible
- Home
- Stranger
- Different World (Taormina.Me)
- Underneath The Ice
- Jeweller (Part 2)
- Black & White
- Kiss The Ground
- Dolphins
Music reviews of Black and White 050505
Music Review: Another Great Minds Record
Rating: 4 Stars
I'm a fan since the days of Love Song and The American on 45's. Yes...I'm that old. I walked 8 miles after school to purchase "Promised You a Miracle" on 12 inch the day it was released. I've seen every tour since Sparkle in the Rain. I met my wife while queuing up for the Real Life show in San Francisco. Needless to say, this band is the one of the most important parts of my life next to the obvious things like family ,friends, faith and country.
Having said that I will tell you all that I would love to give every Simple Minds record 5 stars because I have found something in each of them to make them classics to me. The period from "Sons and Fascination" to "Sparkle in the Rain" is my favorite time in music. "Don't You Forget About Me" came out and I did not care for the song although the treatment they gave it made it a better song. I will not call it a sell out by any means. Then a very sad thing happened. Derek Forbes left the band for reasons I still am not sure about and their sound changed dramatically.
I was a bit disappointed in Once Upon a Time because it was such a different record from what they had seemed to lay the groundwork for with "Sparkle in the Rain". It since then has grown on me and "Alive and Kicking" and "Oh Jungleland" are among my favorite songs of theirs.
So we have a band that just tore through the United States with an enormous tour that spawned what is considered to be one of the great live albums of modern times. I like it enough but again.....no Derek=differnt sound. I would suggest to anyone interested in this band to track down bootleg live recordings of their "New Gold Dream" and "Sparkle in the Rain" shows. Absolutely breathtaking.
Anyways, so we have this great band who release a great live album from a huge tour and what do they do? They get quite political, dial the "wall of sound" down to organ sounds and release "Street Fighting Years". Big mistake for this band. I truly believe they could have stayed true to themselves while releasing another New Gold Dream-ish record and kept that huge fan base that came along after "Once Upon a Time" I know for a fact that they lost a huge portion of their new fans because of "Street Fighting Years" It is a good record, many love it and I can understand why but it is among my least favorite records if not the least favorite of mine.
So they release "Real Life", "Good News from the Next World" which are both terrific records but I can understand why some of the Minds purists turned off from those. They had lost Michael McNeil after "Street Fighting Years", had session synth players come in along with Charlie Burchill assuming some keyboard duties as well. These two albums along with Neapolis illustrate the absolute importance that one great musician has to a band who saw some of its members splinter off.
Charlie Burchill is to me the most talented, creative and intelligent musician of his time. Listen to his guitar work from "Sons and Fascination" to present. I won't include Reel to Reel or Life in a Day because the guitar is quite subdued on most of the tracks. Even Empires and Dance shows the budding of a great guitar player who knows his place in a band. This man never steps on the song to exhibit his craft, he plays exactly what a great musician knows what a song needs, nothing more, nothing less.
I know there are guitar players out there whose talent is limitless like Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page but I submit that Charlie Burchill's talent is right on par with these two but the simple fact that his guitar work complements the songs rather than stands out makes him the best in my opinion.
His keyboard work on Neapolis makes it one of my favorite records of all time. Derek Forbes plays on this record and his excellent playing compliments it very nicely. To bad EMI decided to screw it up and not release it stateside. The decision makers at EMI should have been flogged for that one.
"Our Secrets are the Same" is a very solid record, very different and I can understand why some did not like it but I listen to it at least once a week.
This brings us to Cry and then the subject of this long winded review, Black and White 050505. Cry is pretty decent, very heavily influenced by the trance and techno music that was dominating the European music scene(I will take that over American gangsta rap and rap metal every time by the way) but still very good.
Black and White is a record that is excellent in its own way. It seems the sounds have been paired down a bit as far a layering but I think the vocal style works well at this point in time. Eddy Duffy's bass playing is spot on and I know the comparisons to Derek Forbes are out there but he is mostly uses a pick and it does effect the style. I noticed it when seeing him play with the band right before Cry was released. Not a ton of chord changes, harder than most bass styles because the bass is played like a guitar in a way.
The opening track "Stay Visible" is my favorite on this record which is solid all the way through. The only song that I skip at times is "Beautiful Stranger" because the opening is very odd but the song does pick up. "Kiss the Ground", "Home", "Dolphins" are my other favorite songs. "Dolphins" has some incredible keyboard and guitar work on it and Jim Kerr's vocals are subtle and moving.
In my eyes this band has not released a single record that I would not recommend to people who are fans of more alternative popular music. I'm sure my friends who are die-hard Rush fans probaly wouldn't care for "Reel to Real Cacophony" but most of us who grew up listening to the New Wave and punk of the time wouldn't go wrong picking up any Simple Minds record including this one. They are that good.
Description of Black and White 050505
One of Scotland's most successful bands, they defined a generation, have scored over twenty Top 20 hits in a career spanning nearly three decades. They have sold over thirty million records, had five #1 albums, a #1 single in America - plus three American Top Ten singles and have been voted Q magazine's world's best live act. Now after a three year hiatus Simple Minds are back with their best CD since New Gold Dream, called Black and White 050505. Jim Kerr & co-founder Charlie Burchill sound every bit as good as they did at the height of their fame in the '80s. Mixed by the legendary Bob Clearmountain (Roxy Music, Rolling Stones, INXS), Black & White is a very strong & contemporary album with an anthemic, epic sound that embodies everything the band was ever revered for. 9 total tracks. Sanctuary. 2005. * No US release until early 2006!Alternative Rock CDs
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