Midge Ure has seen the highest highs and plumbed the lowest lows of the music industry. A 1976 number 1 with Bay City Rollers-alike Slik, followed by financial ruin. A founder member of New Romanticism and international stardom with Ultravox, Band Aid, Visage and as a solo artist, and then a sad slide into musical obscurity, drink and more financial ruin.

You'd think he'd have had enough by now and be happy running a health food shop in Paisley.

And yet, although he last troubled the charts in his own right in 1991 (yes, i know Vienna and Do the Know It's Christmas have had re-releases/reworkings since) Move Me is arguably his most accomplished piece of solo work, and also by far his most personal. 20+ years after after the creative tour de force of Ultravox's Rage in Eden, Midge Ure has crafted an at times uplifting, at times downbeat, always interesting album that reminds you what a good songwriter and underrated vocalist he is.
This is best exemplified on tracks… more »

Midge Ure has seen the highest highs and plumbed the lowest lows of the music industry. A 1976 number 1 with Bay City Rollers-alike Slik, followed by financial ruin. A founder member of New Romanticism and international stardom with Ultravox, Band Aid, Visage and as a solo artist, and then a sad slide into musical obscurity, drink and more financial ruin.

You'd think he'd have had enough by now and be happy running a health food shop in Paisley.

And yet, although he last troubled the charts in his own right in 1991 (yes, i know Vienna and Do the Know It's Christmas have had re-releases/reworkings since) Move Me is arguably his most accomplished piece of solo work, and also by far his most personal. 20+ years after after the creative tour de force of Ultravox's Rage in Eden, Midge Ure has crafted an at times uplifting, at times downbeat, always interesting album that reminds you what a good songwriter and underrated vocalist he is.
This is best exemplified on tracks like Let Me Go - a personal account of drink dependency that has no right to be as uplifting as it is, and Strong - a moody verse which explodes into a chorus writ large in an almost Bond-score fashion.
Monster is a rock instrumental that appears to have wandered in off a Green Day album (and makes for a fun change of pace) whilst Somebody, Absolution Sometime and the title track, Move Me reek of the sort of quality, professionalism and experience that only someone at the top of their craft can pull off. There's just a bit of filler - Refugee Song is so forgettable I can barely remember it as I write about it, but the rest is as good as he's been.

Such a shame, then, that this wasn't his 'difficult second album'.
1988s rather indulgent Answers to Nothing marked the end of his purple patch. If Move Me had been released in its stead things could have been so different.

Sadly, in the UK at least, there isn't a wide audience for Midge anymore. That is, perhaps, why the decision was taken to mess with the sublime Beneath a Spielberg Sky for an uncomfortable mess of a single release, when the album track here is among the best things he's done.
It's also, perhaps, why he tends to tour solo and acoustically now - something of a shame as hearing these songs as they appear on the album in a live environment would be a damn fine way of spending an evening.

So at a time when people are least likely to be listening Midge Ure produces his best solo album to date. Typical.