Simple Minds
Black & White 050505

THE REVIEW

In life, sometimes you lose your way. You find yourself becoming a poor imitation of who you once were.
In life, sometimes things happen on their own and you no longer know who you are.
It happens often, it happens to many. It happens to the people you meet on the street, the girl sitting across from you on a subway train, the man in a car stuck in traffic, the lifelong friend who suddenly vanishes into thin air.

And so it happened to the Simple Minds, who in the eighties were the most credible rivals of U2, wrote songs that made their mark and that millions of people sang in unison in stadiums all over the world.
Then nothing, the slow and relentless fall into emptiness, old age, fatigue, and unlikely attempts to reinvent themselves that seemed on one hand pathetic self-celebrations and on the other grotesque caricatures of themselves with twenty more years on their shoulders.

But sometimes suddenly, without any specific reason, you find your way again, in a moment everything seems to return to how it was, there comes a moment when you suddenly remember the exact point where everything ended so you can resume the journey in the right direction. And the journey of Simple Minds seems to be able to resume, this time credibly, from this album titled Black & White 050505 which was released almost quietly a few days ago.

Introduced by a nice single, Home, an elegant and engaging rock-pop even if not hair-raising, the album was received by critics as a miracle, a bolt from the blue. I, however, admit that I bought it out of sheer curiosity and due to a lack of other more interesting options over these weeks, convinced that I would harshly criticize it, almost never agreeing with the judgments of specialized magazines in the field.

And yet today I apologize for the sin of prejudice and bow my head in front of my superficiality. Perhaps because I didn't expect it, perhaps because I'm also reaching my thirties, but this album, I always speak the truth, is not bad. It really seems like a step back, not because there is an '80s revival atmosphere, but because the album sounds modern and polished, with the same creative spirit as before but with renewed energy and originality in writing, and magically the feeling of fatigue from the last 15 years has disappeared.

Nine songs of medium to high level, following each other diverse and cohesive over the course of an album with no frills, pleasant and well-crafted. Particularly noteworthy is the 5th track Underneath The Ice nestled in the center of the album, beautiful and able to make an impact. It alternates tracks that make your head move with darker and more intense tracks that move your heart instead.
The atmosphere seems to suggest a continual lifting and then collapsing again, a continuous sighing in melancholy that is immediately concealed by bursts of renewed energy.
But essentially the feeling that remains with me at the end is a conscious and serene sadness with barely concealed symptoms of self-destruction.
The CD booklet is indeed a strange triumph of bullets, sharp blades, thorns, reptiles, and pierced hearts and phrases written in red like I WOULD BURN MYSELF have an effect.
At the end of the album, beware, there comes the bullet, the one you don't expect: the 9th track Dolphins is simply stunning, it goes straight to your heart and leaves you breathless and speechless. A six-minute long hard and dark ballad that leaves you with a lump in your throat and slams the door. An incredible song that alone is worth the whole album.