Hucknall has soul beneath the schmaltz
Simply Red SE Hydro, Glasgow
In the interval between a first set of lesser-known back catalogue numbers and a second one made up of the whole of Simply Red’s most successful album, Stars, familiar tinny pop floated through Glasgow’s Hydro. It took a minute to realise that canned Simply Red music was the between-set sonic wallpaper at a Simply Red concert.
Mick Hucknall’s sanitised popsoul has often sounded callously commercial, rather like shopping-centre background music. Playing it, Muzak-style, while the audience took their wallets to the bar and merchandise stalls might have been an act of funny, self-lacerating cruelty. More likely, it was a reminder of why Hucknall has rarely been accused of modesty.
Hucknall disbanded Simply Red in 2010 with a farewell tour, but returned to the live circuit last year, releasing a new record – Big Love – in the process. This outing marks the 25th anniversary of Stars, and before performing the full album, the band played a set that bravely omitted big hits of the Eighties such as Holding Back The Years and If You Don’t Know Me By Now.
This low-key first half showed Hucknall and his band of long-term session musicians at their best; stripped of the need to provide high- energy pop, they revelled in a softly soulful sound that enjoyed a sense of air and space.
The cover of Talking Heads’ Heaven was shamelessly, almost obscenely luxurious but retained enough discipline and rhythmic snap to keep it just on the right side of saccharine melancholy.
The breezy bounce of So Beautiful was louchely understated fun, and the breathy stabs of muted horns lifted it momentarily towards the sublime.
Most striking of all was Hucknall’s voice. Especially in that more relaxed first half, it thrummed with a creamy, throaty, natural tone quite absent from the band’s pop records. He held the microphone a foot or more away from his mouth and let effortlessly soulful sounds drift out.
The second half was much less convincing, since the record opens with its big hits – the euphoric Something Got Me Started and Stars – and then sags badly.
Not even the strong album closer Wonderland could not rouse a bynow subdued crowd into offering much more than polite applause at the end of the set.
The encore changed that, the audience responding with loud relief to the flashing primarycoloured lights and counterfeit latin beat of Fairground. Sadly, Every Time We
Say Goodbye closed the night on a cheaply sentimental note, those few deft, jazzy touches of the first set a distant memory.