It’s safe to say that Simple Minds are still Alive and Kicking. The eighties stadium-rockers released their sixteenth studio album Big Music at the end of last year, they’ve just announced a slew of European festival dates for this summer, and they’re currently in the middle of a massive twenty-nine date UK tour.
The band use tonight’s show to showcase a number of tracks from Big Music, and these go down a storm with the near-capacity crowd. It’s easy to see why the fans love the new songs so much – the record is a fresh and invocating return to form from the Scottish stalwarts, and the new tracks sit comfortably alongside decades-old classics in tonight’s setlist. Of the new songs, it’s Riders on the Storm that’s the highlight; the band have taken The Doors’ low-fi masterpiece and transformed it into a pounding melee of delayed guitars and squealing keyboards, and it sounds absolutely fantastic. It’s chaotic yet contained, stripped-back yet explosive, and unquestionably Simple Minds – we love it.
The six-piece rattle through a selection of songs old and new, including Dolphins, Once Upon a Time and Love Song. Frontman Jim Kerr is on top form throughout the night – he may be a little older than he was in the band’s stadium days, but he certainly still knows how to work a crowd. Backed by a band including original guitarist Charlie Burchill and backing vocalist Sarah Brown, it’s genuinely striking how similar the band’s live shows sound to their original studio recordings. The show continues with more tracks from Big Music, as well as a selection of singles and fan favourites from the band’s extensive back catalogue. Dropping Don’t You (Forget About Me) into the middle of the set proves to be a masterstroke – the band’s biggest hit is greeted with the biggest roar of the night, and the sight of three thousand people singing the track’s famous ‘La, la la la la…’ refrain is not something that we’re going to forget in a hurry.
The tenderly beautiful Spirited Away and anthemic fan favourite Sanctify Yourself close the main section of the band’s set, before they return for a euphoric run-through of Alive and Kicking. They may no longer be lighting up the charts, but tonight’s performance shows us that they’re not planning on giving up any time soon. They’ve still got the energy, they’ve still got the passion, and they’ve still got the fans – Simple Minds are here to stay.
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