Holy Smoke

Peter Murphy’s attempt to follow up on the quiet but clear commercial success of Deep unfortunately didn’t land so well in its release year of 1992, with the attention of the US ‘alternative’ audience broadly switching from elegant Anglophilia to scruffy homegrown grunge. A pity since Holy Smoke was, a couple of songs aside, a striking, moody listen that found Murphy and his backing band the Hundred Men, in their last full go round with him, delivering on such strong songs as “Keep Me From Harm,” “Low Room” and the splashy closer “Hit Song.”