Simple Minds team up with original bassist Derek Forbes and producer Peter Walsh for a reprisal of their love affair with all things Krautrock. After the big arena grooves of 1995's Good News From The Next World, Neapolis, the band's 12th studio album, throws a sharp U-turn, aspiring instead to the modish soundscapes of New Gold Dream (81, 82, 83, 84).

As calculated as it might seem, this shift in emphasis makes for an immediately more appealing record. This being Simple Minds though, the pilgrimage to Berlin goes via the French Riviera, and while there's less pomp and ceremony than before, there's still a surfeit of hot air and faux-U2isms.

Walsh nevertheless doles out the required studio touches - humming synthesisers, treated vocals, icy guitar patterns - and Glitterball, War Babies and Killing Andy Warhol, in particular, emerge with oddly familiar colours but not a little dignity. What was once a steroid-inflated monster has returned to the ring several pounds lighter, even if Neapolis's fixation with an era 15 years ago is one that some might find as unhealthy as the inflated stadia rock of recent times.

3/5

Mark Blake
Q Magazine
March 1998