Search - Simple Minds :: Neapolis

Give it a chance to grow on you!

Andy Warhol | UK | 08/06/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Statement 1: This album is a masterpiece.



Statement 2: This album is trash - don't know why I wasted my money.



I bought this album almost immediately when it was first released many years back and then wondered why I

did..."Statement 2" definitely applied.



About six months ago, I was moving house and stumbled across the CD hidden away in a corner. I put on a few tracks while packing and was amazed by it...just seemed like a completely different album to what I remembered...."Statement 1" definitely applies now!



I don't know what it was about this album when it first came out - maybe it was just ahead of its time but the mix of strings, hard guitar riffs and synths just didn't seem to work then but now sound brilliant.



I actually stopped buying Simple Minds albums after this one thinking they had "lost it". I only logged onto Amazon just now to see what others thought of it while I was looking for any follow-ups to this album...that's how much I love this collection of songs.



Barely a day goes by when you don't finding me blasting out such excellent tracks like the amazingly-titled Killing Andy Warhol, War Babies, Superman & SuperSoul and the infectious Androgeny.



I guess the great insight I had with this album was the same as another reviewer here had which was to just let the music wash over you. The songs then start to make sense and you begin to appreciate the genius hidden away in this modern work of art.



Andy Warhol would be proud...if they weren't killing him.

"

GOOD stuff from a GREAT band

-- | Gondor, IN | 07/06/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Simple Minds is my favorite band - let me make that clear up front. I utterly adore these guys, and I wish they'd live forever, and keep making music until the end of the world. In fact, I'm sure heaven is a place where "Belfast Child" is always playing in the background. That's why the Minds' 1998 effort, "Neapolis" (not released here in the States), was such a disappointment. Apart from some really fantastic stuff ("War Babies, "Tears of a Guy," and "Song For the Tribes"), this album is relatively bland and formless. It's not as much so as U2's "All That You Can't Leave Behind" - but it's not the Minds' best work. Make no mistake, however - the Minds in a slump is a galaxy apart from the rest of the music that crops up these days, particularly on that popular local radio station so fond of utter thoughtless filth. Most bands never make a tune as excellent as "War Babies" even on their best album. Simple Minds, on the other hand, is a band with more superb tunes under their belts than any I can name (challenged only by U2, which, I feel, is likewise digging itself out of a slump). The Minds' following album, "Cry," however, is much more gratifying as a whole. These guys rule."