Simple Minds "Sons And Fascination/Sister Feeling Call"

Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call is the (double-LP) fourth album by Scottish post-punk band Simple Minds. It was released in September 1981 and was their first to reach a wide international audience. It includes the singles "The American", "Love Song" and "Sweat in Bullet".

Sons and Fascination and Sister Feelings Call were two separate albums. They were assembled from the same sessions and released at the same time and, in some instances, sold as a double-LP set. The two releases are variously categorised as a double album, two single albums or a single album and an extended play. The current CD remaster contains all the tracks once split onto two LPs, with their respective track running orders preserved. The original 1985 CD reissue deleted two songs from Sister Feelings Call, as the maximum running time of Red Book CD releases at the time would not accommodate the entire set, and Virgin were unwilling to issue the material as a two-CD set.

The sessions are the last to have the same line-up as all its predecessors. Drummer Brian McGee left just after recording the set, and was replaced by Kenny Hyslop as part-time member for the upcoming tour. Hyslop also appeared in the "Sweat in Bullet" and "Love Song" videos.

Having ended their contract with Arista the sessions were the first recordings the band made for Virgin Records. They worked with producer Steve Hillage, who was a guitarist in the progressive rock band Gong. One thing Hillage and Simple Minds had in common was a love of krautrock music. The band's previous three albums were produced by John Leckie.

The rhythm section was made more prominent than on any earlier album of the band, loud, heavy and sometimes anchoring a track to one or two driving rhythm patterns, but also often put at moving angles with some of the other instruments or with Kerr's vocals (as in "The American" or "Sweat in Bullet"); this gave the songs a spatial, multi-planed and atmospheric sound, whilst keeping up propulsion.


"Boys from Brazil" is inspired by the novel, as Kerr has said in interviews. The line "babies cannot manage crocodiles" is likely inspired by the Lewis Carroll logic puzzle: "All babies are illogical / Nobody is despised who can manage a crocodile / Illogical persons are despised".

Viewed as vinyl LPs, Sons and Fascination is the fourth Simple Minds album, with Sister Feelings Call being the fifth one. Or their double-LP fourth album. Indeed, the two were released simultaneously in 1981, Sons and Fascination being the main feature, and Sister Feelings Call included as a bonus disc with the first 10,000 copies of the original release. It reached number eleven on the UK Albums Chart, number thirty-one on the Australian Kent Music Report chart, number 7 on the New Zealand RIANZ chart and number four the Swedish Sverigetopplistan chart. Since 1981 the album has been certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry.

The restructured Canadian version of the Sons and Fascination album (expanded to ten tracks, six of the eight on the UK release and a further four taken from Sister Feelings Call, there shortened to five tracks on the vinyl release and six tracks on cassette) had a significantly different running order, beginning with "Love Song".

Upon its first CD release in 1985, Sons and Fascination came with five of the seven tracks from Sister Feelings Call added directly after the main set, so that the CD played as a single long album. As two tracks from "Sister Feelings Call" had been dropped due to the technical limitations of Compact Discs at the time (the disc's running length having to fit within 74 minutes), the album was therefore not complete. No indication was given on the inserts or the disc that the latter five tracks were from "Sister Feelings Call". The dropped tracks included "League of Nations" and "Sound in 70 Cities" (an instrumental version of Sons and Fascination's "70 Cities as Love Brings the Fall"), both of which later appeared on the CD single of the 12-inch cut of "The American" and would re-appear in album form in 2002 and 2003 when remasters of the double set were issued under the title Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call.


In 2012 Virgin Records released the X5 CD box set containing the band's first five albums, each containing extra tracks. This could be considered to contain the definitive version of the album(s), collecting all the tracks spread across the various releases to date.