The album in question falls into the elite category of those treasures whose emotional trail, the sphere of memories leaves an infinite stellar tail that periodically reaches the present, overwhelming and altering the same perception of the overall quality, configuring in “New Gold Dream ”An iconic content that we well know belongs to a glorious late new wave era and together with a certain image of Simple Minds.
Jim Kerr and associates managed to penetrate in a flash into the process of forming a category up to now from a subculture, young people, who independently began to consume pop music, in those early 80s freed from the ghosts of a too cumbersome past, free to contain sounds so intimate and at the same time light, so full of space but at the same time romantic, introspective and at the same time good for any occasion, which had to do with the personal universe of student bedrooms rather than with the mass street engagement.
But beyond the cultural aspect, which largely underlies the sensational success of this musical genre made more for the mind than for the muscles, in their fifth album the Simple Minds they simply reach the apex of their first part of their career that began with “Life in a day”, reaching the culmination of their period, it is good to repeat it, as a new wave, with that aura still of beardless guys from Scotlandwith these productions that today we would define as antiquated by how muffled in the ear, with that sense of darkness in which the leader’s voice is often lost as in a fog, completely different from what is open instead will be the song in the very near age that will begin with “Sparkle in the rain”.
“New gold dream” captures the spell of inspiration that materializes in the languid guitars of Burchillin the enveloping keyboards and synths of Mac Neilin the sinuous voice and not yet from stages of Kerrin the magnificent and powerful bass lines of Forbes, a band with a glaring impetus where harmonies, taste, balance between the parts produce, without interruption of quality, these nine songs between perfect hits, “Promised you a miracle”, “Glittering prize”, “Someone somewhere (in summer time) “, Dreamlike songs with a mysterious charm (” Big Sleep “,” Hunter and the Hunted “), in which you can feel the whole personal dimension of the group, so delightfully enclosed within its own conception of music that it becomes its only bearer without its knowledge, plowing the simple hearts and minds of the pop music imagery of 40 years ago, so eagerly willing to welcome them.
Basically, there was nothing better in 82 than listening and singing anthem so glued to their own time as the title track, a song that brings with it much, much more than its 5 minutes and broken, a sort of singing liberation, an appointment so often awaited that is renewed and renewed with each listening, with that simple and sly refrain, engaging and irresistible typical of Simple Minds, that in fact dissolve in a liberating hymn between synths and guitars that will no longer have similar comparisons in their future history. On the other hand, it was enough to see them in that 1982, aesthetically and in live action to understand how much they were inside their time, how much desire to emerge there was and above all how much sincerity in their harmony that was transmitted directly to the desire of the fans to share. of these sensations: it was not an intellectual transference as could happen to Smithsthere was no spirituality and solemnity of the U2to give a couple of examples, there was the immediacy of a simply modern and current sound, melodic and identity, of pure sonic celebration: music for music, the time that passes exactly captured by the melody and rhythm of these songs .
A definitive album, a seal to an almost film-like journey that finds ample points of connection in the cinematic sensations of a road movie, if only for how intensely lived the songs of “New Gold Dream” have been and continue to be.
81-82-83-84!
Publication: September 13, 1982
Duration: 45:01
Tracks: 9
Genre: New wave, synth pop
Label: Virgin, A&M (USA)
Producer: Peter Walsh
Tracklist:
1.Someone Somewhere in Summertime
2.Colours Fly and Catherine Wheel
3. Promised You a Miracle
4.Big Sleep
5.Somebody Up There Likes You
6.New Gold Dream (81/82/83/84)
7.Glittering Prize
8.Hunter and the Hunted
9.King Is White and in the Crowd
Today “New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)” by Simple Minds turns 40 | IndieForBunnies