Album review: Simple Minds

SIMPLE MINDS: GRAFFITI SOUL

***

UNIVERSAL, £12.72

THERE'S an odd, explanatory sleeve note on my copy of Simple Minds' new album. "Graffiti," it says, "is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property. Graffiti is sometimes regarded as a form of art and other times regarded as unsightly damage or unwanted." Really, you don't say?

It's a little bizarre that Simple Minds, in an age when Banksy is an international celebrity and Tate Modern has just staged a big graffiti art exhibition, think it's necessary to explain what graffiti is. But perhaps it's telling.

For a long time now, this once all-conquering Scottish band have seemed stuck in a timewarp, admirably attempting to embrace the provocative and new but somehow doing so in such a clunky way that it makes them look even older and more conservative.

Often I find myself wondering what Jim Kerr must think about the career path of U2. Long ago, U2 aspired to sound like Simple Minds. Both, post Live Aid, found huge success by making epic, earnest stadium rock with a conscience, supporting Amnesty and the Free Nelson Mandela campaign. U2 then cannily reinvented themselves. Realising that their po-faced worthiness was starting to work against them, they embraced irony, postmodernism and camp, cherrypicked ideas from musicians half their age, and managed to remain both successful and, in most people's eyes, culturally relevant, lauded by everyone from Q to the NME.

Simple Minds' activities since 1990 have sometimes seemed like a parallel but less successful version of the same project. Around the same time as U2 were borrowing ideas from the Chemical Brothers with Pop, Simple Minds were going back to their synth roots with Neapolis, and listening to trance and techno. More recently they, like U2, have returned to the kind of music that made them big in the first place, revisiting their 1982 breakthrough album New Gold Dream. And yet, while U2's No Line On the Horizon is currently inescapable, Graffiti Soul – despite being accompanied by a tour of sizeable venues – has the distinct whiff of a cultural non-event.

Why should this be? It's partly just down to the random ebb and flow of fashion – and, in that sense, rather unfair. It's partly because, for 20 years now, U2 have simply been writing more memorable songs than Simple Minds.

But mostly, one suspects, it's because compared to U2 there has long been something slightly hamfisted about Simple Minds. Jim Kerr will turn 50 in July, but still thinks he can get away with lyrics like "I could still cut through, a war machine with its missiles set on you" or "Cruising in control, admiring the spread beyond the neon sprawl", words which conjure unfortunate images of middle-aged spread and rusty tanks.

For the most part, his lyrics still seem cut and pasted from Rock's Big Book Of Clichés. Bono's do as well, admittedly, but somehow Bono gets away with it due to the sense that he's a clever man playing with the language of rock and roll. Kerr, you suspect, just couldn't think of anything better.

Then there's the production. Is there really any excuse, in 2009, for a group of female backing singers going "na na na na na" foxily? It's like Living in a Box all over again. The drum tracks, meanwhile, often sound like they were recorded by a clock-watching session musician in 1987. It's an occupational hazard, perhaps, for a band consisting of two core members and a string of hired hands. But you long for a brilliant young producer – or, alternatively, Brian Eno or Daniel Lanois – to shake things up a bit.

All these drawbacks are a shame, because they distract attention from the good things about Graffiti Soul. The album starts very promisingly – opening track Moscow Underground is a reminder that what Brian Eno has been doing with Coldplay lately was done by Simple Minds decades ago. Closing track This Is It, meanwhile, has a sense of purpose, a rousing chorus, and some genuinely thrilling guitar playing by Charlie Burchill.

In between, though, Simple Minds often sound like they're taking an indulgent stroll around a well-established comfort zone and, if a tune turns up on the way, that's a bonus. Perhaps this is for the best – pushing themselves artistically has, in the past, resulted in some of their worst records. But that doesn't make songs like Stars Will Lead The Way any less tired.

Graffiti Soul at least sounds like a band enjoying themselves, as demonstrated further by a bonus disc of cover versions. It's not that much of a bonus – they barge through Rockin' In The Free World and Whisky In The Jar like a pub band, not a good thing in this context. As for their hamfisted take on Massive Attack's Teardrop, there are certain kinds of fun that should only be had in the privacy of one's own home.

CRITIC'S CHOICE

Florence and the Machine

Oran Mor, Glasgow, 31 May

One of this year's brightest pop hopes pays a visit to Glasgow ahead of the release of her debut album. With her gangly frame, thrift-shop chic, haunting voice and thrilling music, Florence comes across like the result of a lucky genetic splice of Bat for Lashes and a young Eddi Reader. She deserves to be as successful as both.

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