Best Simple Minds Album

Pisces, If you like "Love Song" I'd probably just go for the Sons & Fascination/Sisters Feeling Call cd, which contains it. "Love Song" is probably the most discoid thing on there, but the collection has a very consistent feel so you'd probably like the rest too, especially "The American". The album has quite an odd and distinct widescreen experimental rock feel to it - the fact that Steve Hillage produced it makes a lot of sense, it's their prog album basically. Its portentous rock vibe actually weirdly prefigures their later stadium sound in a way that their subsequent album doesn't. This is the first album where Jim Kerr tried to sing, er, grandly. But the songs are mostly very very strange despite their widescreen sheen - odd rhythms, complicated screwy melodies, tenuous choruses and most of them drift on for five or six minutes.

Then you could either go earlier to Empires & Dance, which is more discoid and dancey but much darker and explicitly artier. Or you could go later to New Gold Dream which is also very widescreen but explicitly preferences synth-pop over rock.

It was kinda weird how the albums seemed to flip back and forth between rock and dance-pop inclinations at that point (although never entirely in one camp):

Reel to Real Cacophony - rock
Empires & Dance - dance-pop
Sons & Fascination - rock
New Gold Dream - dance-pop
Sparkle In The Rain - rock

LIVE IN THE CITY OF LIGHT 1987:

http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:7Q-qcwipEIteXM:http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41tjIESVxpL._SL500_.jpg

1. "Ghostdancing" 7:22
2. "Big Sleep" 4:27
3. "Waterfront" 5:21
4. "Promised You a Miracle" 4:38
5. "Someone, Somewhere in Summertime" 5:59
6. "Oh Jungleland" 6:35
7. "Alive & Kicking" 6:27
8. "Don't You (Forget About Me)" 6:37
9. "Once Upon a Time" 6:06
10. "Book of Brilliant Things" 4:53
11. "East at Easter" 4:20
12. "Sanctify Yourself" 7:06
13. "Love Song" - "Sun City" - "Dance to the Music" 7:02
14. "New Gold Dream" 5:31

Christ almighty! Street Fighting Years number 2! Real Life above Sparkle in the Rain! Neon Lights above 'I don't like Simple Minds at all!'. Zero for Life in a Day!

― Keith,

I keep reading that as if Keith is also saying Jings Crivvens & Help Ma Boab.

Should we revive this or have a specific X5 poll?

there was some discussion re the boxset here :

Simple Minds, classic or dud?

X5 poll, and break up S&F and SFC.

These results are odd, is Street Fighting really that good?

We need to run it again and again until Empires & Dance wins.

I'm with you on that!

These results are odd, is Street Fighting really that good?

Ha, this is like when Belfast Child won the Simple Minds singles poll

Tbh Street Fighting years was the first SM album I bought as a frustrated tween and I loved it for sounding "alternative" - a couple of months later I heard The Cure's Disintegration and forgot all about that album

I'm never sure which one is the best, but TPL has endured Once Upon A Time, at long last: http://nobilliards.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/simple-minds-once-upon-time.html

I'm happy Street Fighting Years almost-won this poll. I discovered SM as a Duranie with 'Don't You' (of course) but wasn't taken by the subsequent singles to such degree as to buy OUAT. I hated the rockist, echo-laden sound of the live album. Then I heard the Belfast Child EP, bought the album and was transfixed. Lost them again with Real Life - I was disappointed with MacNeil leaving. I've never understood the widespread hate for SFY. Yes, it has one or two minor songs, but otherwise the album is glorious (title track and 'This Is Your Land' my fav tracks) and, to my ear, it doesn't sound pompous/overblown/whatever at all. Epic, yes (that's the point). Anyway, 1989 - what a crop year for 'adult pop' albums (Gabriel, Bush, Byrne, Sylvian's 'Pop Song' single..).

What a year for music in general!

how the fuck did street fighting years get so many votes in this poll

very weird, I suspect foul play

It's a great high end stereo demonstration disc, I suspect. Trevor Horn basically going "Well I've done a few huge rock albums in my time, sure why not."

What a Frankenstein's monster of an album:

The lack of equality and unity within the band's ranks soon became evident. Drummer Mel Gaynor was sidelined during the album sessions (apparently after disagreements with Trevor Horn) and was eventually demoted to session player status, with much of the drumming in the studio being performed by Manu Katché (from Peter Gabriel's band) and Stewart Copeland (ex-Police). Bass player John Giblin - who'd joined the band in 1985 for Once Upon a Time and played on the subsequent tours and the Live in the City of Light album - left the band during or immediately after the sessions, despite having made significant contributions to the album (including writing the ballad "Let It All Come Down"). The circumstances surrounding Giblin’s departure are undisclosed (although the band's previous bass player Derek Forbes has hinted that ultimately Giblin simply "didn’t fit in" with the band). Some of the bass guitar parts on the album were played by producer Stephen Lipson.

I do love Wikipedia sometimes. Because when you think Celtic/folk music, you think of fretless bass:

While still maintaining the epic arena rock sense of scale and drama which the band had developed since the mid-1980s, Street Fighting Years also moved away from the American soul and gospel influences of its predecessor in favour of soundtrack atmospherics and a new incorporation of acoustic and Celtic/folk music-related ingredients including fretless bass, slide guitar and accordion.

i can see someone liking it, maybe; but more people really like it than once up on a time?

In the UK, maybe.