In some ways this feels like a return to the music of the late Fifties/ early Sixties, the crossover from jazz into soul, and I can’t help but get the feeling this is exactly what Mick Hucknall was going for. And why not, because for a long time (at least treating the albums on this list as representative of contemporary tastes) nobody has done any plain, honest soul and R&B about emotions for a long time.
And although this is another of those bands that I would normally turn up my nose at, I have to admit that they do it pretty well, Hucknall’s voice works perfectly for this kind of music, whether it’s the funkier Red Box, or the slow-dance special Holding Back The Years, or the blues-jazz Sad Old Red (can you see a pattern here in the names? Hucknall’s got red hair. Would you have guessed?)
There’s a cover of Talking Heads’ Heaven (from Fear of Music), which I had to go back to compare. Simply Red slow the tempo right down and turn it soul, while the original Talking Heads version is more like Bowie of the Eighties. Both work really well, which I think is a mark of a good song. The other big hit from the album, Money’s Too Tight To Mention, is also a cover, of a Valentine Brothers tune that isn’t a piece of classic Sixties Motown, but was only released three years before Simply Red’s version.
Something that did strike me about this album, for which I was grateful and probably added to the classic sound – although “keyboards” are listed, it wasn’t loaded with Fairlight sounds, and the drums were real (Chris Joyce), not a Linn. The final track, Picture Book even has a little bit of a dub sound to it, very atmospheric. I shan't turn my nose up at the mere mention of Simply Red any more, but I also probably won't rush back to this one.
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