“Ringing, haunting guitars, lush waves of keyboard, tightrope bass. Old photographs, misty eyes, sitting by the fire and waving goodbye.” — Solid Sound
Imagine it’s 1986 again. New Order, Depeche Mode, and OMD own the import bins. In Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, two students are quietly recording something that reminds of them… but doesn’t quite sound like any of them.
Mel Eberle and Steve Jones formed The Arms of Someone New in 1983, drawing from a restless confluence of The Beatles, psychedelia, the melancholic 80s wing of Factory Records, and The Cure’s Faith-era austerity. Their instrument list reads like an invoice from a pawnshop: simple synths, a Roland TR-707 drum machine, reverb-drenched guitars, and voices that floated rather than performed.
“Exquisitely romantic, atmospheric, open-hearted music.” — OPtion, November/December 1986
The album ranked among the finest American indie releases of its year and earned a devoted following in the college radio underground, a scene that valued atmosphere over aggression, texture over trend. It has aged with remarkable grace. A fully-80s album that transcends that decade. The drums carry no 80s bombast. The guitars run clean. The melodies arrive like the weather: gradually, inevitably, changing the scenery before you’ve even realized.
This 40th anniversary reissue presents Love, Power & Justice in remixed and remastered form from the original tapes with enhanced artwork and a suite of previously unreleased bonus material: 4-track versions, demos, and alternate recordings from the same period that reveal the quietly searching quality of the band’s process. For those arriving new to the record, it is a discovery. For those who have carried it for forty years, it is a restoration.
Name-Your-Price download at Bandcamp