SIMPLE MINDS

REJUVENATION 2001-2014

DEMON

★★★

SIMPLE MINDS HAVE ENJOYED A WELCOME RENAISSANCE IN RECENT TIMES – AND THIS NEW BOXSET CHARTS THEIR CREATIVE RENEWAL IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM

Gold doesn’t turn to shit overnight. Diamonds don’t dissolve to dust. The accepted view that Simple Minds, in their early years the most precious and molten of electro-dreamers, succumbed to hubris and became bombastic and worthless, is simply too pat.

That said, there is no doubt they had wilderness years. Speaking to Classic Pop this year, Jim Kerr freely confessed that his band spent the early 21st-century flatlining: “You find out a lot about yourself when you’re in a van driving to a half-full club, past a stadium that you once sold out.” Those fallow years may not appear a period ripe for anthologising, yet this new 6LP coloured-vinyl studio albums boxset, with three of the albums out on vinyl for the first time, tells a more complex story than you might expect. Even when the Minds lost their way, they had a pulse.

Their nadir was 2001 covers album Neon Lights. Their windy takes on Bowie, Patti Smith, Kraftwerk, The Doors and Roxy Music were sleek but added nothing to the originals, and turning Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart into a jaunty electro ditty was truly baffling.

Next year’s Cry was little better, a turgid plod through the motions where only the Vince Clarke-penned The Floating World showed any signs of life. Its chart placing of No.80 seemed entirely apt but then, a recovery began.

Black & White 050505 (2005) opened with the potent Stay Visible, a charged return to the epic grandeur of early career jewels such as Glittering Prize, and spawned the halting single Different World. It was a turning point. After all of the bluster, Simple Minds were striving to be intimate again.

By 2009’s Graffiti Soul, they were back in the Top 10 and, on songs like the thrumming Rockets and hell-for-leather This Is It, Kerr had relocated his soul as Charlie Burchill’s guitar was once again spitting out miracles. Moscow Underground even found them re-embracing I Travel-style motorik: a most welcome development.

The title of 2014’s Big Music was ominous, as if heralding a return to the portentous flatulence that had derailed them. Yet it was misleading, since tracks like Blindfolded and Honest Town were as poised and charged as anything they had crafted since New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84).

The takeaway from Rejuvenation? That Simple Minds’ journey out of their wilderness years was not an easy one – but at least they eventually found a way home.

Ian Gittins

© Michael Putland/Getty Images

DEPECHE MODE

CONSTRUCTION TIME AGAIN – THE 12" SINGLES / SOME GREAT REWARD – THE 12" SINGLES

SONY

★★★★

Hot on the heels of August’s release of the 12" singles from Speak & Spell and A Broken Frame, Depeche Mode now release 12" boxsets of the extended singles from their third and fourth albums, each containing six vinyl discs of original tracks, live versions and B-sides.

If A Broken Frame had largely captured a confused band in flux after the abrupt departure of Vince Clarke, by 1983’s Construction Time Again, it was a very different story. Alan Wilder was now a full-time member, while Mute boss Daniel Miller had bought a gold-standard Synclavier II digital synthesiser.