What’s happening to me? I’ve just come to a complete ceasing of wanting to write/type at the moment. I *want* to write – but I feel like I have such an excess to get off my chest that it just feels easier, and more fun in some ways, to just do a vlog. I like the feeling that the vlogs give me. Like I am actually talking to someone, even though I am not specifically talking to anyone.
I have the discipline required for study, but the blog is falling victim to my enjoyment of the academic study taking over. My blog has been such an important focus for me for the past seven years in particular…I don’t know…I don’t want it to waste away! I feel reluctant to push it, especially when such a lack of content is happening and when there *is* content, the focus is more on my study then anything Simple Minds based. And THEN, when I have a topic I should be throwing myself into, like the New Gold Dream anniversary…I’m just left to think “Meh. What can I add to it that is anything different/not being said by hordes of others?”
I honestly can’t even remember my first listening experience of the album! When I think back to when I used to borrow Simple Minds music from the library when I still lived in Oz – I’m sure I gave New Gold Dream a listen. I can remember the album artwork and having a copy of the CD at home – so it would have been borrowed from the library. I think I was more swayed by what was on the Glittering Prize compilation from memory. I have this vision in my head of having the CD in my home (mum’s house) but I don’t have much of a recollection of listening to it. From how I felt about their music by Sparkle In The Rain and being absolutely blown away by Waterfront and loving Up On The Catwalk and Speed Your Love To Me, I get the feeling I found NGD a bit….”soft” at that point in time? Which is very weird upon reflection as had I absorbed myself in it properly, I would have seen/felt the darkness underneath in tracks like Colours Fly and Catherine Wheel, Big Sleep, Hunter And The Hunted and King Is White And In The Crowd. Having said that, I’m pretty sure I came away from it liking Someone Somewhere In Summertime and Glittering Prize – and most likely Promised You A Miracle also.
And even the rekindling of SM fandom – if I can call it that? What happened in 2014 – I’m not sure when I listened to it (again? Fresh?) for the first time? It would have felt like the first time due to no recollection of actually listening to it in the past, just a vague notion that I had. I know that in 2014 I was intimidated by it. I adored (still adore it – I think I will always love SAF/SFC more than NGD) Sons and Sister SSSOOOOO much that NGD scared the bejasus out of me. I kept putting off listening to it because I would worry it would either massively disappoint me. That maybe I’d become deliberately contrary and just not feel won over by it because I was harbouring prejudice towards it. And I was probably worried about feeling that way about it because I feared the polar of that happening – and I’d fall head over heels in love with it and SAF/SFC would become my second love – and that actually scared the shit out of me!! Which is RIDICULOUS, I know! But..I guess to me I could see that SAF/SFC were the “underdogs”, I guess. And I’m for the underdog. Always. In 2014, I fell in love with Simple Minds’ music wholeheartedly through being won over by Empires And Dance and SAF/SFC…New Gold Dream has only ever been an extension of that, an extension of love that was already there.
The faint memory I had of the first fresh listen was being bowled over by Big Sleep and King Is White. Both have such dark underbellies. Big Sleep was so obviously about death for me – which stunned me as I actually never expected there to be a Simple Minds track so starkly about death like Big Sleep is, it just blew me away. The lines…those lines “Valuable friend, we saw you leaving this way”, and “Where did you go? Immaculate friend. For a lifetime I’m grateful”, they’re just fucking heartbreaking! And I know I am deemed an anally retentive bitch for my hangup about the lyrics – thinking back to my thing at … Newcastle? I don’t know…whichever one in which I tried to ask Jim about the words to Sanctify Yourself and immediately regretted it – but I was SSSOOO happy he used those words, he sang those words in Edinburgh when they played Big Sleep.
So, perhaps from my angle, my own little perspective on how I will celebrate the anniversary of the album, I will share my favourite line of each song. (Somebody Up There Likes You excepted, of course.)
Here goes!
Someone Somewhere In Summertime: “Stay, I’m burning slow.”
That is the state of falling in love and how that feels in a single line! Right there. Total sum! Dunno how Jim came up with that line as he seemed to have a rather cynical view about “love” at that point – but he wrote the most perfect one line description of love that any person has ever written.
Colours Fly And Catherine Wheel: “Catch a boy, fell falling.”
That love thing again! Lol. I was always falling for boys – never really caught one though. This poor girl cries.
Promised You A Miracle: “Breathing with sweet memories.”
It just conjures up a great, nostalgic image. Also it is probably partly propelled by how fucking DIVINE Jim looks when he delivers that line in the video! Sweet baby Jesus! OMG!
Big Sleep: “For a lifetime I’m grateful.”
Worthy mention to the way the “bridge” goes with – “If only you could see me.” Wow! Beautiful. And the echo on the third one but Jim drops the “me” so the echo is on “see”…it’s just heartwrenching.
New Gold Dream: “Sun is set in front of me, worldwide on the widest screen.”
It’s the line I usually reference the most. But it is hard for New Gold Dream because so many of the lines are fantastic. And I will still think of ArKERRmedes in the bath – sorry, Jim! Eureka!
Glittering Prize: “Catch me in a dream.”
For the longest time I have wanted to get a tattoo of a dreamcatcher with those words circling around the border of the dreamcatcher. Pretty sure I made a mock up of it somewhere…
Hunter And The Hunted: “When only one star’s waiting up on all of us.”
Much like New Gold Dream it is hard to single out one line for HATH. But for me, this line brings up a beautiful image and it allowed me to make a piece of art that I love as much as the “original” HATH piece I did. This song will always have that most special association for me because of what happened with that art and how Jim responded to it.
King Is White And In The Crowd: “Love lies under Western eyes, powerful yet transient.”
King Is White is a political monster! I actually came across something just a few days ago in which Jim actually admits to Simple Minds songs being political BEFORE the likes of things on Once Upon A Time, and even more starkly on Street Fighting Years and I wish now I made a note of where I read it because he talked about the songs being “every day” political. And that has always been my point about their songs having a political edge to them from the earliest days. Not all the songs ARE political, but when you think about ones like, Life In A Day, Citizen (Dance Of Youth), Factory, I Travel, Today I Died Again, Constantinople Line, The American, Boys From Brazil, League Of Nations, Careful In Career, 20th Century Promised Land….they all have an undercurrent of something political in them.
New Gold Dream is more than just a soundscape. More than just an ethereal, dreamy wash of shimmering synths and sumptuous guitar riffs and effects. It’s more than just Jim Kerr’s rich baritone. More than just romance. It’s multi-faceted. And it’s timeless. I saw someone comment saying “This album is sssooo the 80s.” I very much beg to differ on this statement. It was BEYOND the 80s IN the 80s! Even with a line that Jim dated it with from Hunter And ThE Hunted “And how do I feel living in the eighty days” (because if you listen closely that is actually what he sings rather than what is written in the lyrics), and timestamping it with (81-82-83-84) in the album and song title – it is utterly timeless! In 40 years, nothing on it has dated! In Edinburgh, all the songs still sounded so current, so fresh, so full of life.
Will I ever declare it my favourite album of theirs? No, because I am still being a little contrary in spirit like that. I love it. Of course I love it. I had no reason to be scared and come to listen to it again back at the beginning of my diehard fandom with trepidation. Nothing will diminish the love I have for the other albums that preceded it, and I feel that I will always love them a little bit more, but New Gold Dream is as near to perfect as you can get. I do admit that. I will give it that plaudit. It’s not to do with how “complete” it is, per se, because to me, Sons And Fascination is “complete”. Its propulsion, its mood, its linear placement via its UK tracklisting means that from In Trance As Mission to Seeing Out The Angel it’s stunning. It’s still very much a complete journey. A complete package. I think the difference is the journey itself and the moods the albums produce. SAF is a journey itself – a continuation of the travelogue that started with Empires And Dance and it’s autumn, or spring. The days are cooler – the air is cooler – the mood frostier. With New Gold Dream, there’s muslin and gossamer and warmth and sun…it’s a summer’s afternoon/evening. It’s light where SAF is in the shade.
And so, in a display of “better late than never” – Happy Anniversary, New Gold Dream! I love you! (Just not quite as much as Sons And Fascination/Sister Feelings Call.)