Altsounds - Simply Red- Trent Fm Arena 9/04/09

Greatest hits tours in many cases are just ways of cashing in on a washed-up group or artists previous successes. They are often very poor quality and simply ‘cheese’ fests aimed at middle aged women who remember the songs from their youth. Simply Red luckily are different, with a back-catalogue spanning over twenty five years and more chart-topping songs then you could ever imagine, their is nothing tacky or cheesy about this group of established musicians.

The band led by Mick Hucknall played a 20 song strong set that spanned their entire career with songs from their first album all the way up to the most recent. The band walked onto the stage to a rapturous applause and kicked off the night with It’s only love, the audience were immediately off their seats and onto their feet and stayed on them for the entire set. A pleasant surprise for evening was also the inclusion of the band’s cover of Gregory Issacs Night Nurse, a song that Hucknall explained the history of to the audience, a nice little touch that made the gig feel more intimate and less like a 10,000 capacity arena show.

The set even had something for the die-hard fans as they chose to include a couple of songs that rarely get played live such as Jericho, one of his earliest tracks, that while didn’t exactly get the crowd overly enthused was warmly welcomed and was an excellent song choice.

One thing that makes Mick Hucknall such a refreshing live performer and an obvious consummate professional is the way he makes every song sound fresh and exciting as if it was his first time performing it. The bands performance was perfect and faultless, during the set each musician got a chance to shine with lead guitarist Kenji Suzuki deserving particular mention for his quirky playing style and ability.

By the end of the evening Simply Red had proved to everyone why they had been so continually successful and the final encore of the night had everyone singing along as the band performed arguably their two greatest songs, Stars and if you don’t know me by now. The latter had every single member of the crowd singing along and waving their hands in the air, and was a perfect ending to the night, resulting in everyone leaving the arena with a smile on their face and a song in their heart.

Simply Red might not be edgy or controversial or do anything that is likely to make them hit the headlines anytime soon they may also not win the award for best lyrics. However, they do provide a welcome slice of chart friendly soul music that is of a consistently high quality, we can only hope that the band reconsider making this their farewell tour and continue on for another twenty five years.