Eighties Welsh rockers The Alarm are known for their optimism and emotion, and Sigma shows that spirit unabated 30 years after their heyday.
Which is a wonder, really, given frontman and only remaining founding member Mike Peters’ relapse into leukaemia, and his wife, keyboardist Jules’ diagnosis with breast cancer. As a testament to his inspirational positivity, Peters launched a charity urging music fans to become bone marrow donors, winning an MBE, and the husband-and-wife team appeared in a BBC documentary to raise awareness.
The Alarm emerged in the early-Eighties among other similarly heart-on-the-sleeve-wearing Celtic epic-rock bands U2, Simple Minds and Big Country. While their punk roots (Peters’ previous band was The Toilets) had them compared as much to The Clash as U2, it’s the latter who Sigma recalls, often heavily.
Continuing from where the 2018 album Equals left off, Sigma overflows with poignant, passionate numbers. Nearly every one of these is an anthem, from “Brighter Than the Sun” to power-pop number “Can You Feel Me” – which would be why The Alarm have sold more than six million albums worldwide. The acoustic “Psalm” is imbued with imagery of faith, building guitars and gospel vocals to life-affirming effect.
There’s little to recommend the lyrics here. The first stanza of “Blood Red Viral Black”, delivered in staccato vocals to stomping drums, is too rudimentary for opening-song impressions (“You’d think I’d never seen blood before/ You’d never think I’d had a pound of flesh/ You’d think I’d been in love before/ You’d never think I’d had opposite sex”), although the song is somewhat salvaged by its melodic bridge and a fevered guitar solo from The Cult’s Billy Duffy. The affecting love song “Heroine”, complete with soaring Bono-esque vocals, relies on hackneyed drug metaphors.
But Sigma is not the sound of a band diminished by circumstance. Quite the opposite: it’s full of vim. The Alarm are unlikely to change the course of music, but with songs this heartfelt and affirming, they might well improve lives.
