Last weekend I was in the company of friends who didn’t recognize the name Men Without Hats [I guess it can happen] when asking about my immediate plans for this weekend, so they asked their always listening speaker to play it. Afterward, it continued playing a series of 80s tunes…even though they did not command it to! But one of those tunes was Real Life’s perennial classic, “Send Me An Angel.” One of those evergreen tunes that I’ve heard hundreds, if not thousands, of times and never can tire of.

That was percolating in my cranium this week so when I was doing come creative work for my wife on Tuesday night, I listened to my DLX RM of the excellent “Heartland +” REVO CD-R I made in 2016. A refreshing listen for sure, with a debut album that strong. Afterward, I went to iTunes to see if the album ever made it to the DL/streaming ecosystem since in years past this was a somewhat thorny issue. I saw it there in 2024, when I couldn’t help but notice that Real Life released a new single in October of 2023. For $0.99 I immediately bought “Everything Explodes.”

A synthetic, cinematic hum held in the air forebodingly as the tribal drum programming added jolting forward movement to what had begun in stasis. Aggressive lead synths began riffage as others dropped into an Arabic sounding riff as vocalist David Sterry began singing. I hadn’t heard him in over 30 years, but he sounded just like…David Sterry. Rushing synths formed an upward singularity hook as the first verse transitioned to the second.

Slight vocoder harmonizing on the big chorus gave way to angular tech guitar jabbing into the song. Followed by a tough guitar solo courtesy of Sterry before the middle eight as the Arabic riff cycled over a bar or two until the climax. Then a cinematic chilled out coda with string patches and piano ended the dramatic song on a contemplative note. The vibe was tougher than the gentler New Wave era sounds of “Heartland.” Closer to an Industrial/EDM vibe from the late 80/early 90s. Think Bigod 20 or Front 242. But tasty and full of admirable textures.

I hastily let my friends know about this offline, opining that I hoped that there was an album forthcoming since I really liked the track. But today when researching for this post, I discovered that the song was hardly new. It dated back to the “Happy” album by the band that I’ve never seen a CD of…from 1997! Knowing that, I sampled the track from 26 years earlier to find an overly contrived production that was trying much to hard to attract attention in the end-of-millennium-psychosis-blues period that it was originally released in.

So in that respect, the re-boot of “Everything Explodes” was still a very effective “new” track by a band that I’m always happy to hear and wish I had more music from. It’s obvious that Sterry’s head is in a much better place today as he brought much more focus and power to the track than in the 1997 recording. And I’ll stick by my hope that this DL single is followed by a new album sooner than later. It’s obvious that Real Life still have the goods that originally caught my ear 41 years ago.

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