40 years into a music career, you don’t expect many drastic changes; just polishing the bodywork and ensuring the engine’s still purring strong should be enough to keep a smile on those regulars coming along for the ride. Despite which, FM has gone beyond just providing a good service, as anyone caring to take a listen to this their latest album, Old Habits Die Hard, will find out.

That self-mocking album title is British to the core, but as the band’s lead vocalist, Steve Overland, acknowledged: We really looked at what made the most popular FM albums great and tried to focus on that.” Thus, cue strong vocals from the man himself, keen harmonies from all concerned, and hooks aplenty over some decent AOR-come-melodic rock. That much is obvious. Less so, quite how good a number of those songs are. No longer younger men chasing and making the charts, despite the fact you’ll find tracks on here far superior to the dross in the singles’ charts these days, there’s a sense of purpose here, with no time to rest on laurels real or imagined, the passing of founding guitarist Chris Overland, and keyboard player Jem Davis’s recent cancer scare appears to have made the band determined they bring their A-game to this life-affirming 40th anniversary celebration on their 14th album together. It was produced by the band – featuring Overland and Davis, alongside bass player Merv Goldsworthy, drummer Pete Jupp and guitarist Jim Kirkpatrick – and mainly recorded at their own Dale View and Electric Pepperland recording studios.

FM deliver an excellent opening number with ‘Out of the Blue’ that twinkles with a steady hypnotic rhythm before Kirkpatrick’s guitar calls out, Overland cooing seductively in return, and the band collectively turns on the heat pedalling into a late-night, big-city car-cruising blues-beating rocker, embellished smoothly throughout by Davidson’s keyboards, before Kilpatrick rips through an unexpectedly savage solo. Originally conceived by Davis, who commented: “I wrote this song in Lanzarote. “It’s about a guy who is completely happy in his own little world, and suddenly his partner declares she’s not, and is calling it a day! This comes to him out of the blue, but he’s not going to give in and lose her without a fight.” With lines like “You can kill the fire, but the flame lives on” at a push you could declare this was as much about a passion for music as the woman you want by your side, certainly beginning the album with this lends it that further defiant credibility of a band on a mission. Contrasting well musically, ‘Don’t Need Another Heartache’ might be nearer to the sounds of their rock generation mates Thunder with its more classic Paul Rogers’ styled macho stance. Jupp’s classic drum beat sets the tone and there’s even a Bad Company style harmony guitar line in there alongside some worthy “Whoah-whoah!” intonations from Overland and gospel harmonies by all concerned.

Songs about picking yourself up when the chips are down are positive themes on the album. ‘No Easy Way Out’ delivers that with some compulsive pop and rock gloss, while ‘Lost’ gives both a heavier riffed rock and more soulful turn across the breadth of its arrangement. If it’s big sloppy ballads you’ve come here for then try ‘Whatever It Takes’ for size – true there’s a rock steady beat to it, but it’s a tearjerker with a big heart from start to finish, and all about getting the guts to tell the woman of your dreams what you secretly think of her. A song theme as old as time, that will never die.

Ominous and eerie, ‘Black Water’ finds FM sailing into Free waters once more, though this slow southern blues is more akin to the gospel swamp rock Rabbit Bundrick brought to that band on their Heartbreaker album. About a man who can’t escape his past, it’s mournful, passionate and Kirpatrick’s guitar solo squeezes out each note with deep-rendered sorrow.

‘Cut Me Loose’ is a break-up number with a part country rock feel, while ‘Leap of Faith’ is the exact opposite on a song that somehow escaped being written by Coverdale and Marsden back in the day. Big, beefy and in-your-face, and one of those numbers that might get forgotten with the passing of time, but really shouldn’t. Keeping the rock ‘n roll going is ‘California’ where these dirty white boys from the UK take in the sunshine valley’s delights, while questioning if it’s all “a state of mind”.

There are echoes of The Lovin Spoonful’s ‘Summer in The City’ given a Beatles makeover in ‘Another Day in My World’. It’s another deep album cut that I fear will go missed by the great unwashed. The tale of being one of life’s under-achievers but determined to make that change. It has an epic dramatic quality though overall it’s art rock-textured. It wouldn’t be out of place amid the vintage inner-madness that was Supertramp’s Crime Of The Century album but don’t for one minute think that this ignores that pure hearted melodic rock quality FM are renowned for – It has it all, and a little bit more, and all in only just over four minutes. It pulled me in from the get-go as did the album’s closing number.

‘Blue Sky Mind’ bookends Old Habits Die Hard. The same colour noted on the album opener is featured in the title and we are reminded that to feel blue is to be sad, but also that each bright new days begins with the sky filled with this colour and the hope it brings, thus as with many of the songs present here it is one of positive thinking, and looking to see the good when bad times have clouded your happiness for too long. So again, it’s worth being reminded of some the shit cards FM has been dealt with in recent times: “No one knows how they will react when being diagnosed with cancer, “ Jem Davis noted. “When I was diagnosed January 2023, I found my way of dealing with it was just to stay positive. Nothing you can do. I received the all-clear in September. It’s about staying positive and leaving the neg behind. I like this being the last track. It’s a positive message to everyone dealing with cancer!” This sign-off, a little classic ELO-styled perhaps, will hopefully leave you with the smile the song deserves.

FM, a class act still able to deliver a classy timeless album.

• Reviewed by Paul H Birch.

• Old Habits Die Hard is released via Frontiers Music and is available now (from here).

Track list:

1. Out of the Blue
2. Don’t Need Another Heartache
3. No Easy Way Out
4. Lost
5. Whatever It Take
6. Black Water
7. Cut Me Loose
8. Leap of Faith
9. California
10. Another Day in My World
11. Blue Sky Mind