Achilles Past is one of those songs where you instantly know it’s a cut above the rest. The atmosphere clicks right away, and the first notes hit home. The new single by The Black Watch pulls me straight back to the early ’80s, to the time when music started to take over my life, when bands like The Stranglers, Talk Talk, Echo & the Bunnymen, and The Smiths explained the world to me. If a song can, within seconds, transport me back to that feeling—and let me, now 55 years old, be completely carefree for three minutes, wanting nothing more than to just lose myself in the music, with not a trace of nostalgia—then I know for sure: this song is better than the rest.