Simple Minds
Kia Forum, Inglewood, California, May 22, 2025
It’s been a term in usage since the early ‘80s, and the band even gave us an album with that very title years later, but Simple Minds play the Big Music unlike few others. It is vividly on display at the KIA Forum in Los Angeles during this, the fourth show of the U.S. leg of their 2025 Alive And Kicking tour, and it sounds bigger and, surprisingly, better than ever.
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“I can’t tell you how delighted we are to be back in Los Angeles in this historic building,” singer Jim Kerr announces shortly into their set. “We were worried we’d never get that chance again.” Yes, the audience cheers, grateful and appropriately enthused, and tonight they should be. There is an unavoidable celebratory element to the band being there, perhaps because the tour is supporting their recent Live In The City Of Diamonds live album—itself a fine document of the band recorded last year in Amsterdam that, like tonight’s show, illustrates the depth and duration of this band’s remarkable career.
From opener Waterfront to final encore Sanctify Yourself, Kerr & company draw from their varied catalog, offering up welcome tracks like Sons And Fascination and Theme From Great Cities alongside their more renowned hits. The band is surprisingly strong, and though only Kerr’s original partner, guitarist Charlie Burchill, remains from the original group, the current players—including longtime bassist Ged Grimes, drummer Cherisse Osei, guitarist Gordy Goudie, singer Sarah Brown and keyboardist Erik Ljunggren—can’t help but make that issue sonically irrelevant.
The players are uniformly powerful, Kerr is a charming and affable frontman, and in this context, it’s easy to recall what that Big Music descriptor was all about: A bold, dominant rhythm section, a charismatic lead vocalist, and a song with a memorable, inspirational message. Unlike many bands, Simple Minds actually sound better in large halls, with their booming rhythm section, guitars weaving in and out of the rhythm, and Kerr strolling back and forth on the stage, locking eyes with nearly every member of the audience. In retrospect, he and his band stepped up onto pop music’s central stage at a unique time—between Live Aid and the Mandela Concert in the ‘80s, and they’ve been seen by the entire world at once, more or less, and as performers, they can project with the best of them.
That skill set has never let them down. If anything, both Kerr and Burchill (“my boss,” as the singer introduced him onstage) have gotten better with age, and their legacy has been carefully tended to. Some songs make their tour debut tonight—Book Of Brilliant Things from 1984’s Sparkle In The Rain, sung by Sarah Brown, and 1995’s Hypnotised—and some that might be welcome, like New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84), aren’t heard. But of course, there’s no shortage of prime material.
The inclusion of instrumental tracks like Theme From Great Cities and the excellent singing provided by Brown on Book Of Brilliant Things and elsewhere provide Kerr, now 65, a brief vocal respite, but tonight he sings not a single harsh note. Plus, he’s great host. After a powerhouse drum solo by Osei, he grins: “That’s what Simple Minds are—girl power!” After a particularly powerful song closing: “Don’t try that at home.” And most notably, during an extended “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”—the song for which they are most renowned stateside—Kerr asked for audience vocal help in loudly singing the closing lyric “La, la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la” in other languages including French, Italian and Japanese. As one might surmise, nothing whatsoever sounded any different. “Now you understand why this is the best lyric I ever wrote,” he quips
That this leg of the tour includes both Modern English and Soft Cell as support, and that Simple Mind’s set is bookended by taped segments of Tubeway Army’s Are ‘Friends’ Electric, David Bowie’s Heroes and the Beach Boys’ God Only Knows, makes a point that the band itself may be too polite to make. Simple Minds are central players in what has become pop music over the past 50 years—players in very good standing, as tonight illustrates. Alive and very much kicking. Long may they kick.
SETLIST:
Waterfront
Speed Your Love To Me
Sons And Fascination
Let There Be Love
Once Upon A Time
Someone Somewhere In Summertime
Hypnotised
This Fear Of Gods
Oh Jungleland
Promised You A Miracle
Theme For Great Cities
See The Lights
All The Things She Said
Don’t You (Forget About Me)
ENCORE:
Book Of Brilliant Things
Alive And Kicking
Sanctify Yourself
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Live photos: Simple Minds at Cascades Amphitheater, Ridgefield, WA, May 16, 2025 (Credit: Trenton Barboza/Statik Creative)