Simple Minds - X5 (2012) 6CD Box Set, Remastered & Expanded Albums 1979-1982

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Simple Minds - X5 (2012) 6CD Box Set, Remastered & Expanded Albums 1979-1982

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In 2003, Virgin reissued the Simple Minds catalog from Life in a Day (1979) through Good News from the Next World (1995). Less than a decade later, the label and the band put together this compact and inexpensive box set, which includes the first five Simple Minds albums, 1979-1982, in individual sleeves that reproduce the original album art. The 2003 versions were issued in jewel cases with no bonus tracks. The versions here add newly remastered bonus tracks – an incomplete assortment of B-sides, live versions, and extended mixes – that amount to over 90 minutes of extra material, some of which were re-circulated in 2008 through the massive Themes box/doorstop. Prior to their cross into the mainstream, Simple Minds were one of the most vital and creative acts of the post-punk era. Even if you're well aware of that fact, it's astonishing to consider that these five albums, all radically different from one another, were released within a span of three-and-a-half years.

Review by Andy Kellman, Allmusic.com

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Simple Minds - X5 (2012) 6CD Box Set, Remastered & Expanded Albums 1979-1982

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Simple Minds - X5 (2012) 6CD Box Set, Remastered & Expanded Albums 1979-1982

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Simple Minds' astonishingly rapid ascent from humble and derivative post-punk to platinum and transcendent art pop is just as remarkable as the descent that followed it. More remarkable is the fact that a fair portion of the band's fans have such a strict discographical line in the sand drawn – right at the chart-crashing masterpiece that is New Gold Dream – where both sides overlap but don't dare cross. While fans of the band's earlier work essentially drop off with that record (and choose to live in blissful denial that the band existed after that), those on the other end are more or less oblivious to what's on the other side. So what's on that other, earlier side? Five studio albums released within the span of three years. Five studio albums that range from safe to bold, from impenetrable to accessible, from strange to puzzling, and from good to pee-your-pants phenomenal. Life in a Day, the first of the five records released during this fascinating pre-fame period of Simple Minds' career, is easily the least of the first five. On their debut, they seem to run with a template based on the jittery bounce of Roxy Music's "Virginia Plain" and the keyboard-accentuated lunatic punch of Magazine, a band that had released their own debut a year prior to Life in a Day. (Simple Minds would later release an album with the same title, Real Life. Coincidence?) Despite the growing pains, this is a skilled and assured assemblage of guitar-heavy post-punk, with Jim Kerr's over-caffeinated yelp taking the lead role. The arrangements are full, direct, and sharply executed. The high points: the teeter-tottering title track and the J. Geils Band-like swagger (honestly!) of "Someone." The low point: "Pleasantly Disturbed," an epic Velvet Underground-inspired limp that lasts eight very long minutes.

Review by Andy Kellman, Allmusic.com

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Simple Minds - X5 (2012) 6CD Box Set, Remastered & Expanded Albums 1979-1982

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To the delight of some open-minded post-punk fans – fans who also had space for the relatively new, untraditional likes of Devo, Kraftwerk, and Eno in their record collections – the relative simple-mindedness of Life in a Day was blown to bits and left for dead on the pub floor by Real to Real Cacophony, the wide-eyed carnival-like follow-up released only seven months after its predecessor. The artistic leap from Life in a Day to Real to Real has to be one of the most mesmerizing ones imaginable, an improvement that is even more impressive when the short time between release dates is considered. It's where Simple Minds ventured beyond the ability to mimic their influences and began to manipulate them, mercilessly pushing them around and shaping them into funny objects the way a child transforms a chunk of Play-Doh from an indefinable chunk of nothing into a definable chunk of something. Aside from a mercifully brief lapse into aimless murmuring and doodling that occurs during the middle of the record, Real to Real Cacophony is rife with countless bizarre joys. It knocks you on your back with pretentious artsy-fartsiness as instantly as New Gold Dream dazzles with its art pop pleasures, but its challenging melodicism through jerky time signatures and an endless supply of varied sounds and textures keeps you coming back for more. "Real to Real," a sinister rewrite of Kraftwerk's "Radio-Activity," is a good, quick point of reference. Guitars are employed less frequently and are replaced by burbling electronics and further use of keyboard shadings, though the absolute high point of the band's early years, "Changeling," benefits from plangent, angular jabs. The record is certainly as much of an achievement as New Gold Dream – an achievement that's on a plane with other 1979 post-punk landmarks like Metal Box, 154, Entertainment, and Unknown Pleasures. No kidding.

Review by Andy Kellman, Allmusic.com

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Simple Minds - X5 (2012) 6CD Box Set, Remastered & Expanded Albums 1979-1982

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Hardly content with fumbling around with the same sound, Simple Minds shifted gears once again for album number three, Empires and Dance. The "dance" aspect of the title needs to be emphasized, but it's apparent that the group's globetrotting and simmering political tensions in Britain affected their material in more ways than one. One gets the idea that Simple Minds did some clubbing and also experienced some disparate views of the world. The opening "I Travel" is the most assaultive song in the band's catalog, sounding like a Giorgio Moroder production for Roxy Music. Think "I Feel Love" crossed with "Editions of You," only faster; gurgling electronics, a hyperkinetic 4/4 beat, and careening guitars zip by as Jim Kerr delivers elliptical lyrics about unstable world affairs with his throaty yelping (this was still before he developed that predilection for foghorn bombast). The remainder of the album repeals the blitzkrieg frenetics of the beginning and hones in on skeletal arrangements that focus on thick basslines and the loping rhythms that they help frame. The hopping/skipping "Celebrate" isn't much more than a series of handclaps, a light drum stomp, some intermittent bass notes, and some non-intrusive synth effects. It goes absolutely nowhere, yet it's more effective and infectious than most verse-chorus-verse pop songs. The seven minutes of "This Fear of Gods," which boast another dense rhythm abetted by trebly atmospheric elements (distant guitars, percolating electronics, sickly wind instruments), come off like an excellent 12" dub, rather than an original mix. Just as bracing, the paranoiac disco of "Thirty Frames a Second" should have been played regularly at every club in 1980 and should live on as a post-punk dance classic. It's a true shock that this record was released with reluctance. The band coerced an unimpressed Arista into pressing a minimal amount of copies for release (fans still had trouble locating copies), but thankfully Virgin reissued it in 1982.

Review by Andy Kellman, Allmusic.com

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Simple Minds - X5 (2012) 6CD Box Set, Remastered & Expanded Albums 1979-1982

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For their fourth album in three years, Simple Minds signed on with Virgin and enlisted Gong's Steve Hillage as producer. The sessions continued the group's impressive run of high-quality output, but there are instances where ambition gets the best of them. Though their work with Hillage hardly spawned anything on a plane with the two albums that preceded it and the one that followed it, it's still a substantial piece of the Simple Minds puzzle. Bridging the art disco of Empires and Dance with the pop masterpiece New Gold Dream, the album falters when the band seems to be reaching a bit too far for their own good. The other stumbling block is Hillage's production: Where the basslines of Empires and Dance snapped and tugged and where the drums hit with brisk smacks and thick thumps, the echo-gauze of the production work diminishes the impact of the band's greatest asset and makes everything sound bigger and busier than necessary. (The massive qualities of New Gold Dream sound much more natural and less forced in comparison.) The record isn't without moments of brilliance, like the exquisitely detailed "70 Cities As Love Brings the Fall" (a great balance between grand melodies and bizarre noise), the insistently snaking "In Trance As Mission," and "Sweat in Bullet," which has sparkling keyboard parts and crafty guitar interplay. Aside from these moments, the mind tends to wander and wonder if the band was trying to do too much. Upon its release, Sons and Fascination was issued for a limited time with a bonus LP, the scattered Sister Feelings Call, which includes a great pre-Sons and Fascination A-side ("The American"). When Virgin issued Sons and Fascination on CD in 1985, the majority of Sister Feelings Call was tacked to the end.

Review by Andy Kellman, Allmusic.com

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Simple Minds - X5 (2012) 6CD Box Set, Remastered & Expanded Albums 1979-1982

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Sister Feelings Call was initially a bonus LP sold with part of the initial pressing of 1981's Sons and Fascination. A month after Sons and Fascination was released, Sister Feelings Call was issued separately at a budget price. And then, for Virgin's 1985 CD issue of Sons, Sister was added to the end (albeit minus "League of Nations" and "Sound in 70 Cities"). The first three songs on Sister match or exceed the material on Sons and Fascination. "Theme for Great Cities" is one of Simple Minds' best instrumentals, "The American" (a 1981 single) exemplifies the point at which 1980's Empires and Dance and 1982's New Gold Dream cross, and "20th Century Promised Land" offers winding ripples of rhythms without one instrument taking any central role. The remainder is relatively unremarkable.

Review by Andy Kellman, Allmusic.com

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Simple Minds - X5 (2012) 6CD Box Set, Remastered & Expanded Albums 1979-1982

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One of Scotland's finest imports, Simple Minds deliver a strong synth-reared release on New Gold Dream. This album harks the darker side of the band's musicianship, and such material alludes to their forthcoming pop-stadium sound which hurled them into rock mainstream during the latter part of the '80s. They were still honing their artistic rowdiness, and Kerr's pursuing vocals were still hiding. But Simple Minds' skill of tapping into internal emotion is profound on songs such as "Someone, Somewhere in Summertime" and the album's title track. But the dance-oriented tracks like "Promised You a Miracle" and "Glittering Prize" are lushly layered in deep electronic beats – it was only a matter of time for Simple Minds to expound upon such musical creativity which made them a household favorite through the 1980s.

Review by MacKenzie Wilson, Allmusic.com

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Simple Minds - X5 (2012) 6CD Box Set, Remastered & Expanded Albums 1979-1982

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