Daniel Amos: ¡Alarma! (1981)

Tracks:

1. Central Theme
2. ¡Alarma!
3. Big Time/Big Deal
4. Props
5. My Room
6. Faces to the Window
7. Cloak and Dagger
8. Colored By
9. C & D Reprise
10. Thru the Speakers
11. Hit Them
12. Baby Game
13. Shedding the Mortal Coil
14. Endless Summer
15. Walls of Doubt
16. Ghost of the Heart

Just a few months after the belated Horrendous Disc hit the streets, DA released their "new" record, ¡Alarma!  Yes, it's Spanish for "alarm," but no, it's not the band's foray into the untapped Latino Christian Music Market.  Instead, it builds on Terry Taylor's growing disquiet from the previous record over what he believes is the self-absorbed delirium of the modern American Christian church.  So intense and prophetic is his conviction that he would write four albums' worth of music and an equally-sprawling allegorical novella that would all be bound together as The ¡Alarma! Chronicles.

Volume One of the series presents the message in the latest stage of the band's never-ending stylistic evolution: That of a lean, edgy, hyperactive New Wave machine.  While the music is still guitar-driven, the beats and tempos are now tight, fast, and angular, and the group is reduced to a quartet: Mark Cook is gone, although there are some rudimentary synths played by an uncredited member.  And Alex MacDougal makes a cameo appearance on the title track, but the bulk of the playing is the Terry, Jerry, Marty, and Ed line-up.  It's hard to believe this was the same group that just five years prior recorded "Shotgun Angel," but there's not a hint of twang to be heard on this here roundup...er, rave.

The album kicks off with "Central Theme," a song that sets the stage for all that follows with its worshipful insistence on "Jesus in the center," but whose creepy melodies and manic riffs also let us know that this is not going to be a rousing gospel sing or even a contemporary pop chestnut, but a jagged and bracing series of songs that may or may not leave a pleasant taste in our mouth.  The title track, a classic merging of the melodic power of Horrendous with the new modern sound, is the "prophetic theme" of the album, taking on religious leaders and entities who occupy the dying cities and ignore those who are "turning away."  The alarm of God's grief for the church's insularity rings throughout this and the next three records, as DA calls her out on her consumerism, complacency, and religiosity, to name a few or her maladies.  Not something you want to play for Sunday Morning, for sure.

Track by track, Taylor & Co. takes on all of the American church's failures to follow Jesus' two greatest commands: "Love the Lord with all your heart," and "Love your neighbor as yourself."  The former is taken on in songs like "Baby Game," that confronts spiritual immaturity, and another classic, "Walls of Doubt," one of the few truly upbeat songs, that encourages the listener that "It's alright/You can let go now/Love is the master's plow/Crash down the walls of doubt."  The church's mandate of loving "the least of these" is addressed in "Faces to the Window," a song that takes the opposite approach to "Central Theme" in that it presents the heavy message of "little bitty beggars with great big eyes" crying for help to a bright and happy melody.  "Hit Them" also speaks with killing the skeptical doubter with kindness instead of "The Big Book."  Then there's a few shots at commercialism: "Big Time/Big Deal" talks about the seemingly never-ending quest of the performer to "make it big"--be they "secular" or "sacred."  And "Through the Speakers" takes on the old DA burden of spiritual manipulation through false teaching, with an appropriately spooky melody.  Yeah, they never really stopped preaching, but now they're smarter and more relevant with their polemics, and the loopy stylistics of the music make a much more nuanced connection with the listener.


This first installment of the ¡Alarma! cycle is successful in showing the band's chameleon-like ability to adapt to modern sounds and still proclaim the same urgent message of following Jesus not just inside the sanctuary, but also in the streets.  It inaugurated what was the most artistically active and epic period of the band's history, and also heralded of even more changes to come for the band.