release date: Sep. 12, 1980
format: vinyl (1982 reissue - VG 50033) / cd (1982 reissue)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,48]
producer: John Leckie
label: Virgin Records - nationality: Scotland, UK
Track highlights: 1. "I Travel" - 5. "Capital City" - 8. "Thirty Frames a Second"
3rd studio album by Scottish band Simple Minds originally released on Zoom Records succeeding Real to Real Cacophony (Nov. '79) marks a big change of style with emphasis on bolder use of bass and keyboard to draw a more simplistic output. Also, Jim Kerr's vocal performance has changed drastically. He no longer sounds like a Howard Devoto copycat, and he exhibits a clearly darker vocal. The kraut-rock style of the first two albums has been turned much more down and it has been replaced by a distinct synthpop with rhythm at its core, and here and there resembles the initial music by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, which is both a good thing and also a negative one, as they still appear a bit unoriginal.
It's not a great album but it points in a much more original direction, and where Real to Real could easily have been the last by the band this one seems much more like a new beginning. It may not be great, as it simply lacks more fine compositions, but it has a nice tone of melancholy and what appears as delicate darkness.
