The new double album by Midge Ure gets its very own tour – and it’s brilliant.

Broad and deep

I imagine that many reviews begin the same way; “Midge Ure, ex-frontman of 80s electropop pioneers Ultravox...” Hardly fair for an artist whose repertoire is as broad as it is deep and whose main run with Billy Currie, Chris Cross and Warren Cann ended in 1987 with the UVOX album – nearly 40 years ago. Yes, we got a brief respite with Return to Eden and Brilliant, but you get the point – an artist as legendary as Midge Ure shouldn’t be compared with what he used to do. Eight and a half studio albums, countless tours and festival shows, Visage, Thin Lizzy and let’s not forget the small matter of Live Aid.

Ure has been looking back on his career for a while. His 70th birthday show at the Royal Albert Hall in 2023 was a celebration of the breadth of a spectacular career, marred only by a thoughtfully planned rail strike which left many empty seats. His Catalogue tour last year was a look back over a variety of his work.

Rearrangements and transpositions

For some time, Ure’s voice has struggled to keep pace with the energetic, higher register of the early 80s arrangements. Consequently, the modern setlists do a great job of mixing low and slow with instrumentals, something which Ure has devoted half of a double album to this year. But, hey, show me any singer who can still hit the same high notes 40 years on. Every performance by any artist who has been around long enough to matter is a clever mix of rearrangements and transpositions. Music should evolve and the performance should evolve, and that’s what Midge Ure does, very well.

This tour, sharing the Man Of Two Worlds name both with the new album and the wonderfully atmospheric track from the 1984 Lament album, should, according to convention, be a playlist of new stuff mixed in with the fan favourites. That’s not what we’ve got here. Man of Two Worlds is beyond fan service, it’s artsy avant-garde, traditional and exciting all rolled into one. It builds upon the retrospective of Catalogue and shows that there’s more to come from this father of modern minimalist synth-pop.

Genius and Scenius

First up though we have Scenius, an Anglo-French minimalist synth-pop duo. There’s a theme here. Think of Kraftwerk meets the Pet Shop Boys. Their atmospheric soundscape balances accessible songwriting, perhaps living up to their name. Scenius is a term coined by musician Brian Eno; the “intelligence of a whole operation or group of people.” In the band’s case, this presumably refers not only to their collective intelligence but also the immense historical foundation for their work, including from their own inspirations.

Mesmerising performance

The main event opened with one of the instrumental tracks from the new album, together with a mesmerising performance from the band and the lighting designers. One by one, Midge Ure, Cole Stacey and Joseph O’Keefe gathered at a lone keyboard, layering harmonies, conducted from the side by Russell Field. It created a real sense of excitement about what was to come. For the rest of the show, the lighting was clever and complementary, the performances tight and compelling, the arrangements thrilling, but we never really returned to the promise of that opening art installation. Never mind, it was all very good anyway.

Eclectic mix

What’s really nice about the setlist for this tour is the eclectic selection of album tracks that haven’t had as much love as the headliners in tours gone by. We get Again We Love, a Visage track, then the outstanding Call Of The Wild.

Fast forward to the new album with Just Words, then back to Rage in Eden for the pounding, compelling Accent On Youth and Your Name Has Slipped My Mind Again. The long instrumental section in this creates a good vocal pause, extended into the spine tingling Astradyne, the overture to the Vienna album.

Relevant and fresh

Another throwback, Wastelands, shows Ure at his socio-political best with lyrics that are as relevant and fresh and unnerving today as they were when the song was written exactly 40 years ago. Next, two songs from the Lament album; Lament and Man Of Two Worlds.

Monster completes the deep cut section of the show and we’re onto the heavy hitters. It’s good to hear Vienna next, rather than having it as a finale or encore. It sits the song within a context rather than portraying it as the only thing Ure is known for. A show for real fans, this surely is.

Strong talent

The final run is Vienna, Reap The Wild Wind, Hymn, The Voice, Fade To Grey, Dancing With Tears In My Eyes, Yellow Pearl and If I Was. The finale, in this case, is Ure’s first solo single which hit number one in the UK in 1985. A fitting reminder of the strength of Ure’s talent.

The show doesn’t necessarily give fans what they want – it gives them what they need. As one of them said, “Brilliant concert, relived my youth” and that really sums up what this was all about. The people in the audience were in their prime when they first found Midge Ure in his various forms. Song lyrics help us to define who we are at pivotal times in our lives. A beautifully curated show like this takes us back through those times, and we live again. Through music, we find a voice for those experiences that we can’t always put into words.

Luckily, we only need one word to sum up this tour – brilliant.

Midge Ure: Website

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