Sometimes you pick a CD off the shelf and you go, "Hot Damn, I had that!" and stick it into the player to hear a burst of nostalgia. There are some heavily nostalgia-invested albums and sentimental favorites but there are few that I manage to completely forget about in between listens. And so I bring to you, Simple Minds' pinnacle effort (in my books), 'Sparkle In The Rain'The year was 1984. Simple Minds were the band, and they were just so odd.
The hallmark of a Simple Minds album up until then was for songs to have weird shapes, synths galroe, subdued guitars, machine-like drums. Albums like 'Empires and Dances' and 'Sister Feelings' Call' were filled with music that definitely did not come from a Pop Tunesmith's pen. In retrospect, you could tell there wasn't a Finn Brother or McCartney among them to write proper songs - These 'songs' were jagged and ragged, dripping with an alienatingly New Wave sound.
Was I a fan? I don't know. People around me liked them a lot, so I think I just bought these albums to find out what the fuss was all about. Unsuprisingly I have most of their early releases on LP, which is more a testameent to my collective instincts than my love of early Simple Minds. Yet the fact that I have 'Life in A Day' and 'Real to Real Cacophony' suggests I might have been a pretty hardcore fan without knowing it. The least you could say about them to that point, was that they sounded interesting.
Also in retrospect it seems so obvious it is mis-shapen, but at the time 'New Gold Dream' seemed like a new direction in experimental Pop - well, Michael Jackson made sure Pop wan't going to be with 'Thriller'. So much for Pop Experimentalism. In turn, the album after 'Sparkle in the Rain' is 'Once Upon A Time' which goes hard for the pop hits. Indeed thee Simple Minds song book is totally different before and after 'Sparkle in th Rain'.
When you put on 'Sparkle In The Rain', it kicks off with a stunning sonic shock. I'm a fan of albums that really kick when they kick off. It's a pretty uncompromising rock album, by comparison to their previous Pop gestures and stylings. The entire album is drenched in 12bit digital reverb of the time; Which it must be said, back in the mid-'80s sounded so unworldly and cool. The drums are hard, the rhythms are generally fast, and the mix is mostly clear. The sonic unity of the album is so accomplished that when the first side climaxed with 'Waterfront', you realised you had been grooving relentlessly for a side of an LP. How many records were like that back in 1984? The only other albums I could think of are '90125' and '1984'.
What is most striking about the album today is that even in the history of Simple Minds, this album has a unique sound and feel that captures the mood of the times. As they say in 'Almost Famous', it's a snapshot of a band in transition. Somebody once quipped that if you could remember the '60s, you weren't really there. I say, if you could remember the '80s, you are a masochist. Even so, if I had to pick out a musical highlight from the decade, this album might make the Top-10 list. It's one of those albums where you can pull off the shelf and say: "Do you want to know what the 1980s sounded like? Here it is!"
Hmmm... Hold that thought. Let's see now. Here's my 'Top-10 Albums of the 1980s List that does not feature Thriller':
1) 90125 - Yes
2) 1984 - Van Halen
3) Sparkle In The Rain - Simple Minds
4) Peter Gabriel IV - Peter Gabriel
5) Couldn't Stand The Weather - Stevie Ray Vauughan & Doule Trouble
6) Beat - King Crimson
7) Love Over Gold - Dire Straits
8) Aliens Ate My Buick - Thomas Dolby
9) The Joshua Tree - U2
10) A Secret Wish - Propaganda
Honorable mention: Slave to the Rhythm - Grace Jones; White City - Pete Townshend; Synchronicty - The Police; Abacab - Genesis.
That was harder than I thought! That was a drought of a decade.
After 'Sparkle In The Rain', the band went on to produce the hit song 'Don't You (Forget About Me)' for the movie ' The Breakfast Club' which we all sadly know about. It was about that time that I kind of tuned out from their audience group. Unsurprisingly, I don't have any of their albums after 'Once Upon A Time'. I have no idea what they've done since. Reading the Wikipedia entry, it seems they have done a tonne of stuff, most of it inconsequential. It's hard to keep redefining Pop music. Not even Michael Jackson could do it after Thriller; what chance have you got if your best efforts are 'New Gold Dream' and 'Sparkle'?
Still, if you don't have it, then I suggesst you check it out.
If you had it on LP but don't on CD, I suggest you pick one up somewhere along the way.
If you've got it and haven't listend to it for a while, I suggest you stick it on to get a sonic burst of the 1980s. Just for old time's sake.
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