simplyred-stay music reviews Virgin Media
Listening to Simply Red is bloody frustrating. Without question, Mick Hucknall owns one of the best voices this country has ever produced, effortlessly switching from tender to tortured or gliding across the octaves without a second thought. The boy's a total natural. Thing is, this is seldom commented upon as for years, the media has slated him for being smug, sleazy and uncool. Even Bo Selecta! takes the mick out of Mick.
Instead, the slating of Hucknall should always centre around the mediocrity of the music doing a disservice to such a magnificent set of lungs. That bland, lightweight soul pop sound can be slightly overlooked if the melodies are killer - and singles A New Flame, You Got It, Fairground and especially Holding Back The Years you could only admire, however grudgingly, as pop gold. But an albums band Simply Red are simply are not and with the release of Stay, the disappointment continues.
The standard fare of smooth love songs abound, but Mick's in love these days so there's little soul-baring to be had, bar the slow dance atmospherics of pop ballad So Not Over You. While Hucknall might call it a timeless sound, all you want to do is convulse at the wave upon wave of sonic blandness. Often lyrically lazy - "I'm the lock and you're the key to the world of you and me tonight" would offend your partner if you wrote that in a love letter - all the while you want his voice to soar, to crack, catch aflame. You gag to, ahem, "feel" the real Mick - the working class Manc from an unhappy home, the lonely womaniser, the angry socialist. You want to feel something, anything from this interesting man with the sound of soul music in his tonsils. It rarely comes.
Granted, it does fleetingly arrive on the raunchier, more blues and funk influenced section of Stay - particularly on Good Times Have Done Me Wrong, a surprisingly hypnotic groove where Hucknall starkly confesses the excesses of his past. The Clapton-style cover of The Faces song Debris is also a pleasant contrast, although there's something weird about hearing him soulfully croon such down to earth lines as "you were sorting through the odds and ends, you was looking for a bargain".
Mick being Mick, the final section is social comment time. Again, you can indulge this when there's melody to accompany his toe-curling moralising - see previous soapbox moments She'll Have To Go and Wonderland. Money TV and Death Of The Cool have neither the tunes, nor the sweetly simplistic intentions of those examples.
Twee final track Little Englander, meanwhile, is utterly bizarre. Among the weird things that happen are a harpsichord accompaniment, Mick whistling, a kiddie chorus and such lines as "We think we're important. We are. We're a car!", "When you became a star, you became the c**k you are" and "As you pickle through your tirade, you prattle on to the point of a laugh". Eh? But when the album ends with the refrain "Let me smash the plastic face of my country", you feel like it's the most interesting line you've ever heard Hucknall sing. And then it ends.
So, Stay essentially spells business as usual for Simply Red. With over 50 million albums sold and a child on the way, there can't be much motivation for him to push the envelope. Still, such an utter waste of talent smacks of the small-time lack of ambition you'd expect in a real-life Little Englander.
