Big Music Tour 2015

To listen to

Great live album some great hits and fantastic new music

Once upon a time Simple Minds were competing against U2 and Big Country in becoming the biggest band on earth. U2 obviously were the big winners. Regarding Simple Minds themselves, they were major culprits who finally lost their way in a complete manner with the 1995 release of Good News from the Next World (1991s Real Life was not bad but lacked inspiration) and alienating their fans with so-so releases for the next decade. The tide turned somewhat with their 2005 release Black & White 050505, which brought back signs of confidence and enthusiasm that had been absent for a long time. Their 2009 Graffiti Soul release was another fine album, and although both aforementioned albums were somewhat uneven, Graffiti Soul had few low points and deservedly breaking the top 10 in the UK, their first to do so since 1995.Fast forward to 2014 and Simple Minds are back with an album after having toured extensively for the past years. I have listened to this set 7-8 times via streaming Simple Minds themselves provided to introduce the album. The title, Big Music, says it all. There is not one single track here being anything close to being a ballad or acoustic; this is a bombastic album with heavy synth and bass dominant in all songs, many songs being potential audience friendly rockers for stadium concerts (Simple Minds will tour all over Europe in 2015). In short, there are here some really great tracks but in whole the set is let down by a few clunkers. By replacing some of those clunkers with some slower tracks and maybe a bit less synth and bombastic ones, the set would have been close to perfect; but that may just not being Simple Minds today.The first three tracks, like on their Graffiti Soul release, are fantastic. Blindfolded, Midnight Walking and Honest Town are among the best tracks Simple Minds have done. While the first two ones rely little on major choruses they easily hook themselves to the listener with excellent use of synths augmenting the fast paced tracks. Midnight Walking is especially contagious, it is simply stuck in my head. Honest Town, however, is somewhat slower but has a strong chorus with power and feeling. The next two songs, Big Music and Human, on the other hand are in no way being close to being good enough to be included on a Simple Minds album, with lots of synth going on canceling each other out in repetitive melodies; the title track still is a somewhat grower but Human is absolute filler material. The set picks up again with a re-worked version of Blood Diamonds (very similar to the original one, only slightly more layered, released on their excellent Celebrate 2013 collection) and the bombastic Let the Day Begin, which is a particularly strong track, sharing some elements of Up the Catwalk from Sparkle in the Rain. Then another clunker shows up (Concrete & Cherry Blossom) whilst Imagination is another strong synth/rock track, only to be followed by yet another clunker (Kill or Cure). The set closes with two strong tracks, Broken Glass Park (has been on their live set-list now already for a while and like Blood Diamonds a slightly re-worked version from their Celebrate release) and the most mellow track on the set (as earlier stated, it could have used 2-3 of those), Spirited Away.All in all, there are 4-5 great songs on this set and 3-4 additional ones very good. It is let down by 4 tracks that are filler material. A change of pace every now and then would have been nice instead of those tracks. This is really big (bombastic) music. Initially I was going to give the set 3 stars but since some tracks are really good (and maybe simply because I am sentimental towards Simple Minds) I nudge the rating to 4 stars. Hope I can see them on tour next year.

Great product... no Problem with the product just a shame it wasn’t delivered on the day I requested for delivery.... what is the point of being able to select a preferred Amazon prime delivery day??