Simple Minds – Néapolis

As I recall, it was difficult getting my hands on this CD. For a start, it was the first Simple Minds album since 1981 not to get a commensurate US release. There were also two editions of the album. The conventional jewel box edition, and a deluxe enhanced CD in a embossed metal box which of course I had to have! The DLX ED also had a second session featuring the video for the single “Glitterball” and band interviews at the amazing [then] new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao as designed by Frank Gehry in biomorphic titanium sheeting. The deluxe CD echoed the museum’s surface most capably. This may have been the first CD that I used the internet to purchase from. I might have swapped something on an online music forum for it. In any case, it eventually found its was to my Record Cell.

The album got off to a very bad footing with “Song For The Tribes,” a chaotic, messy song that sounded like nothing else in the Simple Minds canon in of sonics. In of composition, it echoed the loose meandering of the title track to “Street Fighting years,” hardly my favorite by this group. It reflected an extreme volte-face for the band coming after the solid, but conventional compositions on their previous album. It was obviously constructed using the then new sample/loop technologies available in the early digital audio workstations of the time.

Layers of acoustic guitars, drum loops, virtual synth licks, were layered in a messy, formless fashion here. Jim Kerr added layers of backing vocals and his lead lines decidedly avoided verse/chorus/verse structure. At least it sure sounded like they avoided it. Certain melodic progressions were dropped in and out of the song in a fashion that might not actually be random, but sure sounded that way. Finally, for maximum confusion, the cut featured a string section! Ten points for invention but the end result indeed sounded like “ten records playing at once,” which is how Kerr typified the song years later in hindsight. I was concerned after hearing this first cut.

Next came the single, “Glitterball.” This track was grounded in a more conventional musicality, though it employed the same elements as did “Song For The Tribes.” The percussive loops were a far cry from anything we’d heard from this band for years. If the notion of the “Sparkle In The Rain” rhythm section ed with the producer of “New Gold Dream [81, 82, 83, 84]” had led to expectations, they were certainly dashed by what came issuing from the speakers. The CD singles for the A-side were conspicuously lacking in any remixes of the track, but this was compensated by the filling of both CDs with post-modern remixes of the era for their back catalogue.
“Glitterball” proffered a low-key coolness with Kerr singing in a casual tone as the chunky rhythm loops were shot through with injections of distorted  guitars. The hazy psychedelia of the lyrics and Kerr’s phased backing vocals completed the picture of an empty clubland attempt at human connection through the dancefloor, expedited by drugs that would eventually leave you as cold as your partner would.

“Glitterball, radiate round the hall.
Lifts me up, then leaves me to fall.
Glitterball, radiate round the hall.
As the great unloved go dancing all the way.” – Glitterball

The “Great Leap Forward” postulated on the previous album had obviously occurred! I cannot emphasize how radically different this album was from the previous five albums that immediately preceded it. Charlie Burchill had by the mid-90s evolved into something of a rock guitar hero. After gradually abandoning his textural, contrapuntal style, he dipped his toe into classic rock styles and tones on “Real Life” before settling on the crisp, fiery rock as evidenced on “Good News From The Next World.” Here, he was employing lots of acoustics and if there were electric guitars in the mix, they were buried under a lot of effects. The sample/loop methodology was given the front position in the mix.

This made the music reflective of machine qualities at its foundation. In that respect, it harkened back to the motorik Krautrock foundations of the band only as evidenced in the new technology of the time. It represented a new synthesis of sound that, in  retrospect, was clearly of its time. Around the same time, Duran Duran recorded their “Medazzaland” album and it also was heavily colored by sample/loop technology. In both cases, the end result was almost psychedelic for the bands in ways that they had never previously touched upon before. Here, the string section added a baroque touch that only strengthened the ties to psychedelia even moreso.

The level of innovation on “Glitterball” didn’t do it any favors on the almighty UK charts. Usually pre-release singles from an album spiked much higher in the UK top ten, but after 17 years, perhaps the magic was beginning to fade since “Glitterball” only crept up to the number 18 position where the follow up singles normally peaked. The next single fared much worse!

War Babies” had an intriguing genesis. The track was based on the Tim Simenon remix of an earlier single, “Hypnotised [Malfunction Mix],” but this would not be the first time that this gambit would be employed by the band. The group obviously liked the grinding, industrial rhythm bed Simenon constructed because a close relative of it became the basis for “War Babies.” The heavy, synth bass rhythms received a contrasting counterpoint with the rich string arrangements that accompanied the lilting ballad. The end result was something of a modern Simple Minds classic, featuring new sounds married to a sturdy melody that could have been from any time in the last decade, but it too fell on deaf ears. The second, final, and most commercial single to be taken from “Néapolis” failed to make the UK top 40; peaking at a lowly number 43. That was the lowest chart showing by the band on a single since 1981’s “Sweat in Bullet” charted at number 52.

What would have been the third single, “Tears Of A Guy” was a dazzling melánge of hip-hop beats, grinding Hammond organ samples and a touch of distorted guitar that was miles away from the conservative sounds that guitarist Charlie Burchill had been favoring prior to this album. Kerr kept out his stadium box as well and his vocals, which had been agreeable since “Street Fighting Years” to my ears, were now set loose in a new and inventive sonic playground. It made all the difference in the world. To me, at least.

While the last track touched on the fringes of hip-hop, “Superman V Supersoul” strode deeper outside out of the band’s comfort zones into uncharted territory. This song featured a lilting, almost folkie melody with hip hop samples and faux scratching. Again, a major coloring of this album was the squelchy, virtual Hammond organ sounds; reeking of 1971, dropped into an utterly fin de siècle vibe where it ended up sounding like neighbors to a band like Urban Dance Squad. I never would have imagined Simple Minds sounding so far off their well-trod path, but having heard it, it worked for me.

The psychedelic, blissed out vibe of these songs got a needed injection of energy with the propulsive, galloping “Lightning.” The rhythm bed had a breathless, chaotic quality that harkened back to “I Travel” while the song was laced with what sounded like blues harmonica samples used rhythmically to accent the train-like rhythms that never let up for a second. Kerr’s lyrics were as intriguingly opaque and fragmentary as they had not been since “Sons + Fascination.” Best of all, the tune sported an honest-to-goodness Derek Forbes bass line one could ride to kingdom come and back! This was an exciting band once again.

“Riot time right noise.
Violent times speak.
Bottled up – like a fake damnation.
Lightning speed.
Crackdown backdoors.
Meltdown shoes.
Bare back riders – a rank outsider.
An automatic cruise.” – Lightning

After such a storming track, the volte-face of pacing that was “If I Had Wings” was something of a let down. While the overall relaxed vibe of the album contrasted with the repetitive, motorik rhythms much of it sported, on this track the band gave into the listless vibe inherent in the music and without that crucial divergence and contrast, the end result tumbled off its pedestal and crossed the line into torpid. Much better was the Valerie Solanis inspired “Killing Andy Warhol.” Undoubtedly, Kerr had seen “I Shot Andy Warhol” in 1996 and it got the wheels turning. The song is a great complement to the film with an intro constructed from mandolin or bouzouki loops being yet another left field excursion into virgin territory.

With all of the new ground covered on the album, there was a single concession to tradition to be found here. The album ended with a trance-derived instrumental called “Androgyny,” that played out like the sequel to “Theme For Great Cities” as the band dove deep into the Neu!/La Düsseldorf Krautrock playbook for one last, definitive time. It differed from the “Sons/Sister” sound by having Derek Forbes on rubbery bass synth instead of a guitar, but it slots in well to that space in any case.

Listening to this album repeatedly over the last few weeks has been a real pleasure, and my initial embrace of this album was more than confirmed. True, the return of Derek Forbes was largely a non-event here. The writing credits conspicuously state Kerr/Burchill. There was certainly a dearth of world straddling Forbes bass lines to be found here. He seemed to be just another pickup bassist at this stage. Long gone were the days of Forbes and the drummer laying vibrant foundation for MacNeil and Burchill to interject their strategic melodic DNA, but that ship had sailed.

What it did offer was a band who had been around the block several times rising to new technology and new challenges without being cowed or afraid to take chances. Not all of them worked, but I’ll take the rough with the smooth at that stage of the band’s career. It was so much more gratifying than the stadium era to these relieved ears. But that’s just my opinion. Whole swaths of the former Simple Minds audience were less than convinced and the album died the death commercially; ending the band’s long ride at the top of the charts that had begun 17 years earlier.

Between Britpop, grunge, and prefabricated pop unexpectedly making a comeback in the charts, it seemed as if Simple Minds had made a return to synthetic art rock at the worst possible time in the market. That was a large pity, since it caused a crisis of confidence in the band which was undeniably crippling, as they made a 180° turn into a completely different direction that no one could have predicted.