Minds Music Monday – The Signal And The Noise

A Simple Minds album release has pretty much stayed at the regularity of an Olympiad in recent years. Black and White 050505 in, funnily enough, 2005, Graffiti Soul in 2009, Big Music in 2014, Walk Between Worlds in 2018, then Direction Of The Heart last year in 2022. Compare that to the first 5 years of the band’s album releasees – Life In A Day (1979), Real To Real Cacophony (1979), Empires And Dance (1980), Sons And Fascination (1981), Sister Feelings Call (1981), New Gold Dream 81-81-83-84 (1982), Sparkle In The Rain (1984) – to say they were prolific back then would be an understatement!

Speaking of five years! Last Thursday marked the fifth anniversary of the release of Walk Between Worlds.

I was sssooo excited for this release because, although I was a confirmed diehard at the release of Big Music, I was ssssoooo new to the Simple Minds back catalogue that I was almost drowning in what was tantamount to new content for me. I had only been getting exposed to their whole catalogue of music for a few months when Big Music came out – so apart from about 10 songs that I knew well – EVERYTHING was new to me.

Forward on from then to the release of Walk Between Worlds and I was fully ready for the new music experience. I was excited to hear Magic when it was first released as the lead single off the album. My reaction to it led Jim to reply to me with this…

That fuelled the fire, for sure! But the thing I REALLY remember being excited about was hearing The Signal And The Noise getting a debut airing on BBC Radio 6 Music. Wow! What a track and it sounded incredible coming through the airwaves.

Several months later when I got myself a new phone for my birthday, I made the track my phone’s default ringtone. It still is the ringtone on my phone.

It has been a strange old 5 years. No one could have really predicted how the start of this next decade of the 21st century would start – though many conspiracy theorists will tell you otherwise.

TSATN acts as a rally cry to seek out the truth and be true to yourself. So I guess the track “Who Killed Truth?” on DOTH could be seen as a continuing dialogue that started with TSATN, perhaps?

It still remains a fabulous track. One of those tracks that had instant “winner” all over it from the very first listen.

We have a while to wait for 2027/8 to come round. Holy fuck! I really hope it doesn’t take THAT long for the next SM album to appear! But given that I can currently count on one hand the number of times I have listened to DOTH so far, then…perhaps it’s a good thing? I’m not sure. As the low number of listens to the album is no reflection on what I think of the musical output on it. Nothing of the sort. Dig elsewhere on this blog and you’ll find out the reason why I have listened to the album so few times.

I would be saddened if we did have to wait another 4 years for a new album though, but only time will tell.

In the meantime…happy MMM! And Happy Anniversary, Walk Between Worlds! Don’t get caught “between the signal and the noise”.