Live Review: Simple Minds shines at Northerly Island in Chicago

By Colette Custin

Scottish legends Simple Minds brought their Alive and Kicking 2025 tour to Northerly Island on Friday, delivering a set of solid classics from top to bottom, along with some other friends and hitmakers.

Modern English and Soft Cell opened the show, with both bands offering their biggest hits (“I Melt With You” and “Tainted Love,” respectively) and a lot of nostalgia while still showing off their chops, and Simple Minds, fresh on the release of April’s Live in the City of Diamonds, proved their staying power with a set that leaned into the hits from 1985’s Once Upon A Time, including “All the Things She Said,” “Sanctify Yourself,” and “Alive and Kicking.”

Vocalist Jim Kerr sounded just as powerful now as he did when those songs were first released, and guitarist Charlie Burchill (the only other original member) showed how his sense of restraint as a guitarist fuels Simple Minds’ arrangements, balancing nicely with Gordy Goudie’s keyboards.

The mid tempo swagger of opener “Waterfront”—appropriate for such a beautiful night on Chicago’s lakefront— had the crowd on their feet from the very start, and main set closer “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” drew the response one might assume it would – total rapture from the band’s fanbase, which, much like Simple Minds themselves, remains ‘alive and kicking’ as the band prepares to enter its fifth decade.