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Popularly conceived as the child of the band's tour through a tense turn of the decade Europe, this album superficially tied Simple Minds to the New Romantic fascination with the continent but Empires and Dance is not a work extolling an idealised Europe but, if anything, rather a travelogue and fragmentary discourse on a bleak and troubled society, which had, in fact, already enveloped Great Britain.
Most obviously propelled by Derek Forbes powerful bass sound and melodies, no member of the band failed to play their part in the creation of this extraordinary album, with both Charlie Burchill and Michael MacNeil demonstrating the reserve and deftness that was a hallmark of all their best work.
The opening track, I Travel, would remain their best known song for some time: a wild melange of thundering beats and electronics, although this was not representative of the album, which was more stately and considered, although not po-faced, as one can hear from the drunken clapping and shouts on Celebrate.
This is the first of the Simple Minds 'must have' albums. No one else has sounded quite like this and it works as a whole with a consistency that more contrived concept albums have completely lacked. There is no filler here and little fat. If it weren't for its successor, one would be tempted to state that this was a band at its very best, yet in a way Simple Minds never surpassed this and certainly never again made such an artistic leap. Here, they evoke the same darkness as Joy Division, without any conscious nod to that other band, perhaps the key difference being Jim Kerr's role as reporter rather than participant. I don't feel the material is any weaker for that.
If you can obtain any of the bootlegs of the subsequent tour, then you won't be disappointed. The songs are enormous live, rearing into gargantuan lives that exceed their constituent parts. Unsurprisingly, the concerts focussed almost exclusively on the new material and some tracks from the second side of Real To Real Cacophony, presenting a band that was unrecognisable as the group from two years before. The high point, for me, is the exhilarating medley of Room and Lou Reed's Rock 'n' Roll, which really has to be heard to be believed.
Opening single I Travel remains the most electronic single here, a pulsing pop euphoria that is like Trans-Europe Express on ecstasy, or rather, like reading international newspapers on the trans europe express while listening to Trans Europe Express on ecstasy: "Timeless leaders stand so tall...Asia steals a new born son/Evacuees and Refugees, Presidents and Monarchies/Travel round, I Travel round/Decadence and Pleasure Towns/Tragedies, Luxuries, Statues, Parks & Galleries...In Central Europe some men are marching...I Travel/Euro-Bureau-Interpol"- the missing link between Trans Europe Express & White Car in Germany for sure...
The other 'electronic' tracks advance on 1979's Changeling- Celebrate sounds like Chic playing Gary Numan (robo-funk at its finest) & Thirty Frames a Second, which is an epic Krautrock-inflected epic that reminds me of Dick K Philip's World-Clock-Counter, its reversing SF-themes. This is the direction Bowie abandoned after Low- 30 Frames works really well against brief instrumental Kant-Kino, which is very Side 2 of Low...
The album as a whole is a darker affair- centred around Burchill's angular guitar, Forbes brooding bass & McGee's metronomic rhythms. Today I Died Again sounds more like Magazine than U2- a huge sound with vague fascistic lyrics equal to Joy Division ("The clothes he wears date back to some war...Back to a year, back to a youth/Of men in church and drug cabarets...Paint me a picture of bodies in sand/Presidents can fall...") The overriding themes of war feature heavily hear and recur thoughout the album; by fascisitic I don't mean this advocates it, merely depicts it- like several Joy Division tracks (Walked in Line, Dead Souls) & films such as Cabaret, The Damned & Salo.
This Fear of Gods is an epic rhythm centred track that precedes 23 Skidoo's Coup- itself an influence (cough!) on Chemical Brothers'Block Rockin'Beats. Kerr waxes sinister repetitions around the rhytm as Burchill and MacNeil offer riffs and keyboard drones between (MacNeil's is very Trans Europe Express!) God knows what Kerr's singing about though:"Someone singing in the showers...Violence & Vivisection...Fear is fast, I'm turning white now...". A suitably huge track...
Forbes bass takes us into the carnival waltz of Capital City, which has the feel of Brecht/Weill in a post-Kraftwerk world; Constantinople Line is even better- Kerr almost rapping over the stop/start rhythms "Hey waiter,I'm First Class!/Hey waiter, what State is this?/I See a land crawl by night...These Stations are useful/These Stations We Love Them...Newspapers, Encounters, Confusion"- Twist/Run/Repulsion takes us into another place, one that precedes the chattering samples of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, prior to an odd series of mantras from Kerr (e.g."Contort, Contort, Contort, Contort...")
Final track Room is probably the most melodic track here, predicting the pop of New Gold Dream (81,82,83,84)- pity it's so brief! McGee offers subtle percussion to the shimmering guitars and measured bass- if Primal Scream or Radiohead did this now they'd get critical plaudits! This is 1980 remember! Kerr sounds both alien and soulful- a brilliant conclusion to a great, if dark album: "I only live here (echoes!)"...
Empires & Dance sounds great in this remastered version, the missing link between Japan and Joy Division; it also ranks alongside Sons&Fascination/Sister Feelings Call (both 1981) & New Gold Dream (1982) as the truly great Simple Minds albums and their creative peak prior to shifting into stadium gear. Pity that b-sides like Kaleidoscope didn't make it here though!
Best tracks: "I Travel", "Capital City", "This Fear of Gods", "Celebrate".
The third Simple Minds is another overlooked wonder, a million miles away from the bluster and pomp of their later years and a dazzling synthesis of electronic dance and avant-garde experimentation. As different to Reel to Reel Cacophony as that album was to Life in a Day, this sees the band remake-remodel themselves as Europhile clubbers with a taste for 'tragedies, luxuries, statues, parks and galleries', taking in Bowie, Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder along the way. Opening song "I Travel" establishes this new direction splendidly, all driving rhythms and a terrific chorus that was more or less rehashed for their hit single "Ghostdancing" five years later. The sparse, hypnotic "Celebrate", the stately, strange "Today I Died Again", the extended, addictive "This Fear of Gods", the ultra-weird "Constantinople Line", the epic, widescreen "Capital City", the ambient flicker of "Kant-Kino", the lost gem that is "Thirty Frames a Second"....everything all adds up to a remarkably solid, very strong album that contributes to the very tempting argument that early Simple Minds really were one of the best things to come out of post-punk...
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