Simple Minds
Sister Feelings Call

In the early 1980s, the Simple Minds burned with a fervent desire to make music, their music, despite the serious obstacles they encountered right at the start of their career: after two albums, "Life In A Day" and "Reel To Real Cacophony," which went practically unnoticed and left them in debt, the young band members, just in their twenties or so, were gripped with great discouragement: no one was interested in how they sounded or sang, as the musical tastes of teenagers on the old continent were massively leaning towards the New Romantic wave with groups like Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet as its late defenders. The third album, "Empires And Dance," did a bit better than the previous two in terms of sales and also received an encouraging reception from critics, but the record label, Arista-Zoom Records, showed a lack of faith in the Scottish band, doing little to no promotion for the record, which triggered the group's move to Virgin.

Here as well, however, the boys from Glasgow were initially met with a certain skepticism and perplexity. They had a lot of new material ready, enough for two LPs, but when the SM announced they were ready to enter the recording studio, the new record label allocated a very limited budget for the production of their first work with Virgin. In the end, the desire to sacrifice as little of the already ready material as possible prevailed, and they undertook the desperate attempt to make two records with money that might not even have sufficed for one. It's said that producer Steve Hillage ended up hospitalized for heart palpitations when he realized that, just during the mixing phase of the 15 tracks of the new double album, the budget allocated for the record had already been greatly exceeded. Thus, in the last months of 1981, it was decided to send the two vinyls, "Sons And Fascination" and "Sister Feelings Call," packaged together, to the record stores, in a limited edition, but this time the sales started well immediately: within a few weeks, the double LP sold out, a reissue was made, and the two records were sold separately. The remastered CD released between 2002 and 2003 unified them once more, so today we can legitimately speak of "Sons And Fascination" and "Sister Feelings Call" as a single work.

"Sister Feelings Call" starts with an instrumental track: "Theme For Great Cities". The piece, a creation of Michael McNeil, is very rhythmic, once again built on a keyboards-bass-percussion line, while what should be the "chorus" is entrusted to the intervention of the synth. The title captures the reminiscence of a theme quite frequented by the SM in those years: music for metropolitan spaces; we recall that "I Travel" from "Empires And Dance," released the previous year, already contained a direct reference to Brian Eno's "Music For Airports" (1978). Musically, it stands as one of the best instrumental tracks by the band, not only that, but of the whole Eighties decade in general, to the extent that this piece has been used by entire generations of DJs in various sampled bases. Regarding the Minds' instrumental pieces, it must be said that this group always had a weakness for this genre: they will delight us again with "Somebody Up There Likes You" in "New Gold Dream" and "Shake Off The Ghosts" in "Sparkle In The Rain," while going backward, two small compositions deserve mention for their stylistic refinement: "Film Theme," in "Reel To Real Cacophony," and "Kant Kino," which lasts only a minute and fifty seconds and is found in "Empires And Dance."

The second track, "The American", is part of the original nucleus of songs written for the new album and is dotted with references to places visited by Jim Kerr and company during the tours the band was starting to perform in those years in the United States. The rhythm remains at intense levels, notably the beautiful intro and, above all, the excellent guitar solo by Charlie Burchill at the end, an absolute display of skill and one of his best solo contributions in the entire SM discography. The third track, "20th Century Promised Land", is one of those that has contributed to discussions about the "epic" dimension of SM's music. Consider the opening (Stories came like the wind / Joining every bridge in the wind / Ringing out footsteps / Calling out steel-heels / I give voice / I give breath / Count out evenings and stars). Especially the first two lines convey the measure of the lyricist's, alias Jim Kerr's, intent to communicate an epochal and generational experience felt everywhere, like the wind, uniting us all, solitary bridges. Notable in this track is the phrasing between bass and keyboards, while Kerr's vocal interpretation remains consistently at high levels.

The next track, "Wonderful In Young Life", is interesting primarily for the lyrics. One might be tempted to say they're "programmatic," but in any case, they touch many of the most "genuine" themes for the SM of this period. I'll mention just a few here: youth, already in the title itself, dreaming, traveling. Already the first lines explain much of a way of understanding existence that Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill adopted when, as teenagers, they left school to travel around Europe hitchhiking: Wonderful In Young Life / Two weeks in another town / Sending shivers along the spine / Of your friends when they call.

What follows is a track we might define as semi-instrumental, as Jim Kerr’s vocal input is reduced to the repeated singing of the title "League Of Nations", besides being delivered with a truly cavernous intonation. It's a sort of tribal dance introduced by the percussion upon which an ever consistent and brief harmonic phrase produced by the keyboards is layered. The last track with words and music on the album, "Careful In Career" plunges the listener into a hypnotic dimension, introduced by a steady crescendo beat in the intro and the entrance of the keyboards which create a sense of disorientation. The intended communication may very well pertain to the meaning of an experience coming to an end, the anguish of someone witnessing something happening around them, seeing people move, yet feeling impotent to act against it, with the image of death being evoked like a lament, and indeed, as an inescapable circumstance that one feels ashamed of, thinking of the years lived (It's a shame to go away / It's a shame / To die already).

The work closes with another instrumental piece, "Sound In 70 Cities", which is essentially the base track without vocals of "70 Cities As Love Brings The Fall," found in "Sons And Fascination." It is probably the most avoidable episode of this entire double album as it is clearly a "filler," laying bare, without the vocal part, technical and stylistic naiveties in the melodic structure and arrangements.

The significance of this "two-in-one" album should be captured in the process of the stylistic refinement of the SM, a pursuit to which each member contributes significantly, finding its most tense and complete outcome in the subsequent work, "New Gold Dream". Charlie Burchill, a serious and diligent professional, derives his guitar style from David Gilmour's school, and from this album onward, his sound-sculpting technique to create eclectic atmospheres is evident. Michael McNeil: a keyboardist with a highly personal style that made him unparalleled in the pop-rock scene of those years, but also for many to come, blends the folk inspirations of Celtic tradition with the myriad possibilities offered by synthesizers, which in the very early Eighties began to be massively used, sometimes achieving tremendous commercial success (one name: The Human League, who with "Don't You Want Me," a song entirely built with synthesized keyboards, dominated the European and US charts). Derek Forbes punctuates his bass lines with strength and precision, laying the rhythmic carpet on which the harmonic constructions of Burchill and McNeil rise. The effectiveness of drummer Brian McGee and Jim Kerr's vocals, which from this album settle on the modulations that he will make permanently his, I've already mentioned in the review to "Sons And Fascination."

If I haven't managed to exhaust you with this, you can read the other one here on DeBaser. Until next time!