Earlier this year, The Alarm managed to fool most of the otherwise biased music press into believing that their paean to 1977 punk, 45 RPM, was the work of a young and hungry new band. In doing so, the single charted in the UK Top 30, something frontman Mike Peters hadn't achieved for 17 years.
Well, The Alarm may not be young, but they're certainly as hungry as ever and this choice cut from the recent In The Poppy Fields album is an inspired three and a half minutes of music.
With its deft guitar touches, acoustics, piano and a typically heartfelt vocal performance, it's inconceivable how any listener would not be swept along with the melancholic magnificence of New Home New Life (named, would you believe, after an Afghan soap opera). "Once you had the power and the glory," goes the bridge. Mike Peters and his band evidently still have plenty of both.
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