Customer Reviews

Neon Lights

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As far as cover albums go Simple Minds' "Neon Lights" is pretty decent. Their choice of material is great, though some would want more obscure song selection. So, what a cover album boils down to is how the songs are covered. Despite what the other reviewers have said, I think Simple Minds' do a fine job of covering. Van Morrison's "Gloria" leads off the cd, and the Minds update it with a techno beat but still keep the song sounding much as it did in the past. I prefer an artist to put their touch on a cover not mutilate beyond recognition. Playing to their strengths, a cover of Bowie's "The Man Who Sold The World" comes off very nicely. An interesting choice is Pete Shelley's "Homosapien" with its sly references to homosexuality--not a song I thought the Minds would cover, but they slow it down and make it hypnotic. Patti Smith's "Danicing Barefoot" is another Simple Minds strength and it sounds just as good as U2's cover. Now I prefer OMD's cover of Kraftwerk's "Neon Lights" over Simple Minds' but they do a decent cover of it. One of the more unusual moments on the disc is the cover of The Doors "Hello I Love You". The Minds take it to a techno, post modern level and I think Jim Morrison would be amused. Yet another gem is the cover of Echo & The Bunnymen's "Bring On The Dancing Horses". Here, the Minds do an excellent rendition, and it may be one of the best songs on the disc. A depressive, morbid cover of Neil Young's "The Needle & The Damage Done" is haunting, and Simple Minds turn in another solid performance here. My least favorite cover is Roxy Music's "For Your Pleasure". This definitely is not the best Simple Minds can do, and I think it's the weakest song on the cd. The last three songs finish the cd in high form. A cover of The Velvet Underground's "All Tomorrow's Parties" is well done, followed by an excellent cover of Human League's "Being Boiled". Here, I think Simple Minds have found their calling! I like Human League's version, but Simple Minds make a nice go of it that could easily be compared to the original. Finally, a cover of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" end the disc on a strangely upbeat note because Joy Division's version isn't. I also like Paul Young's cover of this song on his 1983 disc "No Parlez", but Simple Minds put in a spirited dance version of the track. All in all, a solid cover album compared to most. I don't know why people didn't feel that this disc was very good, we all like Simple Minds, or have been a fan of their work, and I can refer back to their first four albums as being less well made than this disc.

Bit of an oddity this one! Not a bad album by any stretch of the imagination but still "only a covers album" at it's core hence any chance of song writing originality is limited straight away. Some of the tracks stand out and show what kind of a band SM can be when they put their mind to it. "Dancing Barefoot", "Bring on the Dancing Horses" and "All Tomorrows Parties" make the album worthwhile. Unfortunately some of the other tracks lend a weakness to the project which cannot be masked, namely the Minds version of Joy Divisions' "Love Will Tear Us Apart" which seems to have been added as an afterthought and does not gel very well with the proceeding tracks. It's true that the Neapolis influence is felt in a lot of the covers, semi-techno beats and distorted vocals but considering the cover material this actually proves to be effective and brings something new to each of the now familiar tracks. Their rendition of Pete Shelley's "Homosapien" is a case in point. Still, as the note on the inside cover clearly states, the Minds wanted to experience life as a covers band once more. This is fine provided new material, which shows how original this band can be, is just around the corner. Go on, give it a listen.....

I found this CD in a used shop in New York weeks before its U.S. release (not a good sign). I bought it solely as a curiosity, and would probably have never taken a risk at full price for two reasons. For one, covers albums, while they can sometimes be creative in their song selection and approach (listen to The Church's A BOX OF BIRDS or Bowie's PIN-UPS), are generally unnecessary, especially if the songs are very well known and don't lend themselves well to the particular artist (listen to Duran Duran's THANK YOU). One glance at the track listing of NEON LIGHTS, and you can see that Simple Minds has unfortunately decided to drag out the old warhorses like GLORIA, when they should have dug deeper into their record collection.

The second problem is, Simple Minds' quality control has been lacking since - let's be honest - SPARKLE IN THE RAIN. Despite Jim Kerr's negative comments about "Don't You Forget About Me," he and his band have been trying hard ever since to try to recapture commercial glory by hopping on the latest pop music fad (and sometimes a few years too late). On NEON LIGHTS, it seems that the Minds have been listening to their kids' house and techno records, and have created quite awful dance versions of the aforementioned GLORIA, HELLO, I LOVE YOU and LOVE WILL TEAR US APART. Kerr even resorts to a Cher-type vocal distortion trick on BEING BOILED that's downright embarassing.

It's also no surprise that the Minds would cover Bowie, but why choose THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD? Nirvana's version of this song will be the definitive version for years to come - so much so that Bowie himself dragged it out of mothballs on his subsequent tours. But the Minds add absolutely nothing new to the song.

But like the rest of their late 80s and 1990s albums, there are moments on NEON LIGHTS when you are suddenly reminded of the ethereal and uplifting band the Minds used to be. Their version of ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES, in particular, is quite powerful, with Kerr's soaring vocals the strongest I've heard in years. Their hushed, accoustic version of FOR YOUR PLEASURE should please Mr. Bryan Ferry, while the emotional DANCING BAREFOOT is far superior to - dare I say it? - U2's stadium rock version.

And for a good chuckle, listen to their techno-lite version of Echo and the Bunnymen's BRING ON THE DANCING HORSES, and marvel at Kerr's dead-on impersonation of Ian McCulloch.

So taken on its own merits, NEON LIGHTS is a pleasant enough diversion as we await new material. But this fan hopes the Minds have one more NEW GOLD DREAM or SPARKLE IN THE RAIN left in them (I've heard NEAPOLIS praised as such, but it wasn't released here). Perhaps it's unrealistic to expect your favorite musicians to live up to their glory days as they enter middle age. But as their 80s counterparts U2, The Church and Echo and the Bunnymen have shown lately, it is possible to produce strong and creative material years later while retaining the sound that made you famous. Let's hope the Minds will follow suit.

Cover records are nearly as disposable as live releases. There's a sense of diminished expectations before you even play the damn thing. Add to that a band's checkered history, and you have the non-event of Simple Minds' Neon Lights. Expectations are made to be confounded, and Neon Lights is a weird triumph, from its mix of the obvious (Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World", Echo's "Bring on the Dancing Horses") to the obscure (Roxy Music's "For Your Pleasure", the Human League's "Being Boiled"). You hear love and care in these songs, though Siimple Minds don't make the mistake of being slavish. ("Love Will Tear Us Apart" is a house remix!) The songs that seem the oddest fits are best: the Velvet Underground's "All Tomorrow Parties", Neil Young's "The Needle & the Damage Done", Kraftwerk's title track. The songs closest to their new wave heart are rethought, re-explored. Pete Shelley's "Homosapien" - once a cruiser's command - is now a slinky seduction. The Doors' "Hello I Love You", I song I've always hated, is a sexy Goth delight. And let it be officially told: no matter how hard you try, Patti Smith's "Dancing Barefoot" is impossible to ruin.

Simple Minds doing Covers ?

The fact that this cd is Simple Minds doing covers is enough to buy it .

This cd is in limited editions and won't be around for ever.

Songs like "Homosapien","All tomorrow's parties","dancing Barefoot","being boiled" and the non vocal "love will tare us apart' are great.

Remeber their earlier cd "Simple Minds the early years" was a limited pressing too. That cd has long been out of print and is very had to get today.

If you are a Simple Minds fan it is a rare gem to your collection.

If you like to hear bands do covers then this cd is for you too.

I get the sense from this album that Jim, Charlie and friends wanted to have a bit of fun and do something different here. By and large the covers on this album make SM sound like a garage band with a big budget, and having a blast playing with studio toys. My advice, sit back, suspend criticism and enjoy. SM are, in my opinion, a VERY original band. They have always had a unique sound that was always evolving, while remaining faithful to an enduring atmosphere of creative experimentation. It is lots of fun to hear covers of some of the tracks that lead to this approach. The selection of tunes is wonderfully diverse (The Doors, Human League and Joy Division...hard to believe they can even co-exist).

The sound on "Neon Lights" is reminiscent of the electronic approach that the band took on it's last album "Neopolis", a brilliant album, but on Neon Lights the results are less spectacular. "Dancing Barefoot" is the strongest track on here, and is really a great tune that has been reworked to great effect. Everything works here. The remainder of the songs aren't quite as cohesive. The techno beats and electronic effects distort and cloud up some of the songs. There are some other real standouts though: "The Man Who Sold the World", "Bring on the Dancing Horses" and "For Your Pleasure". The album seems to lack the usual SM ...originality. But it is an album of cover tunes,albeit one from an extremely original and creative band. Rather than get bogged down by the aesthetic quandry that this creates, the listener is best served by seeing "Neon Lights" as an informal SM album that offers a lot of insight into the band's influences. It would be unfair to compare this cd to their cds of original material. This is a fun cd, especially for SM fans. Enjoy it. SM sound like they are having a blast doing these covers, the listener would be well advised to do the same. In the meantime, we can wait for the next cd of originals and send hate mail to EMI for not releasing "Neopolis" stateside,and for being corporate wankers and not releasing "Our Secrets are the Same". Oh, and we can say thank you to Eagle Records for picking up SM.

Why do critics ALWAYS compare songs on tribute or cover albums to the original songs? This irks me. If you want to hear the original song, go get the original album! Let the cover artists interpret it as they see fit and grade them on that. A lot of bands like to take a cover song and play it as they would, to show how that song has influenced their sound. Then the critics come along and say, "Well, it was a very unfaithful to the original." When you compare a cover to the original, it's always going to be bad for the cover artist. For one, you NEVER want to purposefully outdo the original artist. It's a respect thing. Secondly, no one band sounds exactly like another band. When one band covers another band, they are bringing a bunch of different influences to the song that they are covering, plus their own particular sound. So the song isn't going to sound exactly like the original. When I go into listening to a cover album, my initial thought, before I even hear the songs, is always, "I wonder what this band will do with these songs." I want to hear something different than the original. I want to hear a particular band envelope a song into their catalogue the way they would if they were the first ones to play it.

Look, for instance, at Tori Amos' "Raining Blood." That was the main song I wanted to hear on that album. To hear what Tori Amos would do with Slayer. It sounded absolutly nothing like Slayer. However, it was also my absolute favorite on that album.

With all of this in mind, I want to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this album both as a Simple Minds album and a cover album. The first five songs are above excellent. Very solid songs. The title track, "Neon Lights" is beautiful. "Hello, I Love You" I didn't care for as much. Nothing to do with how it compared to the original; in fact, I don't really care for the original. I just expected more from the Simple Minds. "Dancing Horses" was also very well done. "The Needle & The Damage Done" is probably my favorite track. Very dark with excellent bass and very explosive at the end. Jim Kerr actually does a good job imitating Neil Young's soft, high tone. "For Your Pleasue" and "All Tomorrow's Parties" are pretty good, but best left toward the end of the album. Not as strong as the tracks before them.

The last two tracks, obvious bonus tracks which aren't listed on the album cover, in my opinion, weren't worth the effort. I think the Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" was just awful. It sounded more like a club mix than anything either Simple Minds or Joy Division would normally do. The vocoder on the equally dancey "Being Boiled" was just annoying. If you happen to get a copy without these two tracks, don't feel cheated.

Overall, though, I enjoyed this album, more as a Simple Minds album, but also as a cover album. I would recommend it for any Simple Minds fans out there who wouldn't judge an album by its cover.

Remember Simple Minds? They're the guys who did cool songs like "Alive and Kicking" and "Don't You (Forget About Me)" back in the 1980s. They've been around since the late 70s, and it shows, both in their looks and their skill. All of the cool bands are doing covers, from Tori Amos to Madonna, so is it any wonder that Simple Minds have decided to do the same with Neon Lights? It's not as though covers are new to Simple Minds. Way back in the days when they were scrawny and used to be known as Johnny and theSelf-Abusers, they would cover songs by Lou Reed, The Doors, and David Bowie. I guess they've decided to come around full-circle, now that it's trendy again.

Although this is a strong album overall, not all the tracks are that great. I skipped ahead to the next track while listening to "Hello I Love You," "Gloria," "Love Will Tear Us Apart," and "The Man Who Sold the World." "Love Will Tear Us Apart" seems like a particularly bad cover; Simple Minds turn it into a techno club song, and I just don't think it works. It makes the Joy Division goth classic both boring and commonplace.

However, the album does have several tracks which do shine. "Homosapien" and "Being Boiled" are quirky and interesting, "All Tomorrow's Parties" is a powerful reinterpretation of that ground-breaking Velvet Underground song, and "Neon Lights" is an interesting take on a Kraftwerk classic.

This cover album is nice, but I think I'd rather listen to Simple Minds performing original material. Hopefully, their new album, Our Secrets Are the Same, will soon be disentangled from its legal problems and released.

Just in case you were dying to know what it would sound like if Simple Minds covered the Doors, this is your chance to find out.

Cover albums are a mixed breed. Some are unmitigated disasters (Duran Duran's "Thank You" comes to mind), others work out well. I would place Simple Minds' "Neon Lights" in the latter category, though not without reservations. There are certainly some lackadaisical interpretations here ("The Man Who Sold the World," "Being Boiled"), but there are also some gems, including the punchy take on "Gloria" and a spacy and ethereal rendering of the title track. Their reproductions of "Hello I Love You" and "Bring On the Dancing Horses" are matters of taste; I enjoyed them.

The real gem, however, is saved for last: Despite Ian Curtis' grating vocals, I've long been a fan of the song "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and its hauntingly memorable chorus hook. Simple Minds has stripped the song of all the lyrics other than the title line, and given the track a dancy, urban updating. It works like a charm. If you are or ever were a fan of this band, this disc is worth it for this number alone.

Simple Minds is one of the greatest bands ever to emerge from the U.K. So after more than 20 years and a dozen albums of original material, why redo music from other artists? If the band wants to let us know who influenced them, I'd rather READ about in an interview, than have them waste valuable studio time that could have been spent on another great album of originals.

With that said, how's the album? Reasonably good. The highlights are mostly tucked away in the second half, namely renditions of Neil Young's "The Needle & The Damage Done," Velvet Underground's "All Tomorrow's Parties," and Human League's "Being Boiled." Each is interpreted in an interesting manner, while challenging preconceptions about Simple Minds' sound. Pete Shelly's "Homosapien," while close to the original, is such a great track it's a treat to hear anyone do it.

As for the rest of the album, some of the covers are rather pedestrian; The Doors' "Hello I Love You" tries to evoke a 'modern' sound, but really sounds more like a couple of soccer dads fooling around with Casio keyboards. Others songs seem chosen - predictably and pretentiously - for their snob/cool factor - i.e. material from critic's darlings like Bowie/Lou Reed/Patti Smith, etc. Simple Minds were big fans of early Genesis, so why not "out themselves" and do a cover of "Watcher of the Skies" or "Cinema Show?" That would be more interesting, and more revealing.

Thankfully, after this album Simple Minds turned out another great album of originals, 2002's "Cry." The band is one of the few that can consistently turn out good new material, so they should stick to that.