Back nearly FOUR YEARS ago now, when I took those tentative steps into exploring the Simple Minds back catalogue and having quickly listened to Life In A Day and Real To Real Cacophony to move onto Empires And Dance and fall instantly in love…it was Twist/Run/Repulsion that was the first track I heard that absolutely blew my socks off. Oh…it was just…the summing up of the parts. Like all the elements of what was being done by the boys (to me, anyway) finally converged for a piece of perfection.
For many early SM fans (and I mean fans of early SM music, rather than long-time fans), as much of a masterpiece as Empires And Dance is to them, Twist/Run/Repulsion is a “bridge too far”. NOT FOR ME! It is absolutely EVERYTHING I love about that time in music, and the time in Simple Minds’ career.
It’s an unsettling piece, granted. It isn’t fluid and smooth. It jutters. The saxophones are jarring and uncomfortable. Pure Bowie on Neukoln wailing sax fest.
And then there’s Jim and those words. A completely different lyric to what was on the demo (which is equally as good). I love that he would just completely rewrite a song having demoed it. And…how he performs that vocal I will never know!
Anyway…here is a version of it posted on YouTube last week that tried to separate out some of the parts of the song…isolating some of the French verse, the sax, and the “chorus” backing vocal. The song continues to astound me. I will love it until my dying day. This version highlights all the components going into a Simple Minds song of the period.
Oh, f*** they were good. And still so! And still so…
https://youtu.be/Z1XB33G64qw