By Brian Quincy Newcomb (Feb. 2015)

Although it was released scant hours after DA’s third release – Horrendous Disc – the three years since the Beatlesque music that had thrilled fans on the “Amos & Randy (Stonehill) Tour” was recorded had changed the band. Keyboardist Mark Cook and second drummer/percussionist Alex MacDougall had left the group, and the music world had turned on to punk. Early records by bands like Talking Heads and Elvis Costello had turned the world onto a raw & edgy, quirky & crunchy sound with literate approaches to rock & roll lyrics that no doubt inspired new directions for Taylor & Co.

The quartet appears to make a major sonic leap with ¡Alarma!, but once you get past the more open and sparse arrangements you can still hear Taylor’s familiar melodic voice and artful lyrical reflections. And, if anything the stripped back arrangements make the rhythm section of drummer Ed McTaggert and bassist Marty Dieckmeyer more crucial to the song’s construction and thrust Jerry Chamberlain’s inventive, hair-parting guitar solos all the more to the fore. At the time, DA fans were a bit overwhelmed by the dramatic shift in sound and tone, but all these years later, they have been vindicated by this albums continued relevance and musical vibrancy. It rocked then, and it rocks still!

Of course, the contrivance of a 4 album “¡Alarma! Chronicles! (we see your trilogy and we’ll up you one),” and a written story line were a curiosity, but ultimately what makes !Alarma! work is the sound of the band working together and the songs themselves. Oh, there’s a bit of playful reflection on their own artistic aspirations on “Big Time/Big Deal,” and a goofy bit of nonsense in “Props,” but the record moves quickly to its lyrical point – a warning to those who live hidden away in their churches (“In My Room”) surrounded only by folk who agree with them (“we harmonize”) and avoid all contact with the real world, with its poor and broken who press their “Faces to the Window.”

“Cloak & Dagger” warns against duplicitous “double dealers” who make promises they have no intention of honoring (I’m quite sure this song is not about any record producer or music company exec), while the desire to experience the “real thing” can be “Colored By” the perspective and tradition down at the little church where they “all wear hats” or have some other spiritual fetish.

As they move into side two (you used to have to turn the CD over), Taylor produced some of the best pop/rock songs of his career, a serious of reflection on his role as a Christian communicator who wants to share the “good news” in a way that it can be received as news that is truly good. As a rock singer, he knows it has to come “Through the Speakers,” but it’s requires tenderness, you can’t hit them over the head with the book, but “God can have his way when you hit them with love.”

And on and on it goes… “Endless Summer” finds Taylor and Chamberlain continuing the tribute to the Beach Boys (and their unique brand of end times theology) that they began on “Tidal Wave.” “Walls of Doubt,” one of my favorite DA songs, captures the struggle to believe with the promise that “love puts to rest some of the questions,” while “Ghost of the Heart” leaves room for the Spirit to “shed the light on me.” A compelling blend of music and ideas that continue to haunt this listener all these years later, it was the best Christian rock release of 1981, IMHO, and it remains in this writer’s top ten of all time.

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