Alarm - New Home, New Life

  by John Clarkson

published: 13 / 6 / 2004

Label: Snapper Music
Format: CDS

intro

Excellent new CDS from reformed 80's anthemic rockers the Alarm, their first official single in thirteen years

“When no one knows from where you came/you recreate and you begin again” sings Alarm frontman Mike Peters as the first line of ‘New Home, New Life’, his band’s first official single in thirteen years. It could in many ways serve as a metaphor for both the Alarm and also for Mike Peters himself. One of the great anthemic guitar bands of the 80’s, the Alarm formed in Rhyl in Wales in the late 70’s at the tail end of punk, and recorded five albums together before finally splitting up in 1991. Peters started a solo career. He then in 1997 also formed Dead Men Walking, an occasional acoustic punk supergroup with ex-Sex Pistol and Rich Kid Glen Matlock, before reforming the Alarm three years ago with an entirely new line-up. The new group, to prove that they still had the ability as a new act to get into the charts, released a successful hit single, ‘45rpm’, under the pseudonym of the Poppyfields in February and then followed this with an album, ‘In the Poppyfields’, this time as the Alarm, in April. Reminiscent in tune of David Bowie’s version of ‘Wild is the Wind’, ‘New Home,New Life’, which appears also on ‘In the Poppyfields’, finds Peters pondering over the modern person’s ability, like the Alarm’s, to recreate him or herself at will and with new guises. Sweeping guitars and a spidery piano combine with lilting vocals to epic, tingling effect. Like the Waterboys. who also reformed after several years away with an almost entirely new line-up, the Alarm create big music with a big sound, In an age in which rock music is especially shallow Peters, like Waterboys frontman Mike Scott, still continues to ask thought-provoking and challenging questions. It is good to have this soul-searching rebel and the Alarm back.

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