Track Listing

1. Up On The Catwalk
2. Book Of Brilliant Things
3. Speed Your Love To Me
4. Waterfront
5. East At Easter
6. Street Hassle
7. White Hot Day
8. C Moon Cry Like A Baby
9. Kick Inside Of Me
10. Shake Off The Ghosts

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11336 in Music
• Released on: 2003-01-06
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

CD Description
1984's SPARKLE IN THE RAIN is both Simple Minds' US breakthrough album and the pinnacle of their career. Less than a year after this album was released, the group scored their first major hit with the Breakfast Club movie theme "Don't You (Forget About Me)".
The singles from this album, the dizzying "Up on the Catwalk" and the gospel-infused "Waterfront", were major college radio hits. These two songs, along with the manic, slashing "The Kick Inside of Me", are the most emotional and heartfelt, and least distant and affected music Jim Kerr and company ever created. The album isn't perfect--no one should ever attempt to cover Lou Reed's "Street Hassle"--but then, none of their earlier albums are, either.

Customer Reviews

A good but flawed work...
This is one album that perhaps isn't as bad as some of the original fans remember. This was the sound of Simple Minds hitting out for the stadiums.

Coming in the same year as U2's big break through (with 'War') it was decided to use their producer, Steve Lillywhite, for the new S.M. album. This will not go down as one of his better production jobs. The sound is blurred and the attack blunted. Forbes' bass is all but lost in the mix for much of the time. Likewise Kirsty MacCol's vocals on Speed Your Love to Me and Street Hassle are wasted. Speaking of the latter track, the Lou Reed song is given a pretty character less reading.

But there is still Waterfront, an genuinely gripping stadium song, Up on the Catwalk, a capable opening number and the closing Shake of the Ghosts, which takes up where Theme From Great Cities left off.

The track that sounds most like War era U2, The Kick Up Inside of Me, is the track with the best sound, having a bit of kick and passion.

This isn't a bad album. It has a decent bunch of songs presented with a reasonable amount of variety. It is, however, let down by the producer, who has blunted the attack and blurred the sound so that individual instruments were frequently lost in the murk.

It is well worth your pennies, but don't expect genius.

Simple Minds at their best and worst
The beginning of the end of Simple Minds.

This is probably the last of the great era of Simple Minds albums.

Having established themselves as hit makers in the UK, Simple Minds linked with the biggest production name, Steve Lillywhite, and started throwing away the synthesisers that made them that bit different to U2, Echo & The Bunnymen and the other big UK bands of the mid eighties.

This is the album where Simple Minds start leaving the clubs and head for the arenas with big anthems like 'Waterfront'. 'Speed Your Love To Me' and 'Kick Off The Ghosts Inside'.

Sadly there is far too much noise, and little subtley of touch that graced songs like 'Sweat In Bullet' or 'Someone Somewhere In Summertime'

Mel Gaynor drums get amplified to near oblivion, and Charlie Burchill's guitars dominate the sound, and Jim Kerr's lyrics get all worldly wise (in the aftermath of Band Aid)

Not a bad album, but Simple Minds were definitely on a downward slope from here on.

When the gold turns to rock
In interviews around this time, Jim Kerr said that the band had ditched some early demos because "they sounded too much like New Gold Dream part two". The band's subsequent diversion into more conventional rock territory was a surprise to anyone familiar with Simple Minds' previous albums, perhaps most obviously on leading single Waterfront, where Derek Forbes offered a one note, on the beat bassline in lieu of his more typical melodic and rhymically interesting contributions.
In fact, this was to be his last album with the band, until he returned almost invisibly to the fold for Neapolis. In my eyes, his departure marked the end of Simple Minds, who would go on to make only one more album of real artistic merit.
Whatever the band's populist intentions, they appear to have retained enough momentum in terms of quality and artistic endeavour to deliver an album that was not without worth. Mel Gaynor's precision and power at the drum stool were highlighted by Steve Lillywhite's production, temporarily restoring some of the interest lost with Brian McGee's departure, notably on Up On The Catwalk. Elsewhere, though, it emphasised the new, more orthodox sound.
Derek Forbes' alleged dissatisfaction during the sessions for Sparkle In The Rain didn't appear to affect his enjoyment of the subsequent tour, which saw the band on cracking live form. However, their musical confidence led to increasingly extended live versions of their songs, which in some cases, cf The American, worked to great affect, but in retrospect it augurs the overblown and vacuous content of their next album. (Touring Once Upon A Time, they would play a fourteen minute version of (Don't You) Forget About Me, without adding any value over the recorded version.)