When the Specials’ Jerry Dammers’ launched the 2 Tone label in Britain in 1979, his group was more than just a ska revival band with good taste in covers — they were a multi-racial spearhead of a post-punk movement combatting skinhead racism (fueled by far-right groups like the National Front) and the craven business-first classism of the Thatcher government. Now, with racist nationalism on the rise amidst the Brexit debacle, the Special’s third album — 38 years since the last one, More Specials — is well timed. As frontman Terry Hall puts it, the band remain “horribly relevant.”
On this iteration, their numbers have been winnowed significantly: co-founder/songwriter Dammers and singer Neville Staple are out of the picture; drummer John Bradbury and trombonist Rico Rodriguez died within months of each other in 2015. But with signpost singers Terry Hall and Lynval Golding in place, and Horace Panter holding down the bass lines, the classic sound is fairly intact, as is the spirit. The latter seems more to the point, as the set opens with stylistic curveballs. A cover of “Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys,” an Eddie Grant funk-rock jam, slyly echoes Booket T. and the MGs, Sly and the Family Stone and Talking Heads circa Stop Making Sense, kindred mixed-race outfits all. “B.L.M.” works a similar groove, as Golding charts a family history from Jamaica to England, with the so-called Windrush generation of post-war immigrant worker, and then to the U.S., suffering racist disrespect every step of the way.
| A1 | Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys |
| A2 | B.L.M. |
| A3 | Vote For Me |
| A4 | The Lunatics |
| A5 | Breaking Point |
| B1 | Blam Blam Fever |
| B2 | 10 Commandments |
| B3 | Embarrassed By You |
| B4 | The Life And Times (Of A Man Called Depression) |
| B5 | We Sell Hope |
