San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
The Specials
Ska revival
This isn’t exactly a proper reunion album by the Specials, the late-1970s British ska band that left an indelible mark on pop and fashion with its fusion of Jamaican rhythms, punk attitude and liberal politics — influencing everyone from No Doubt to Gorillaz. Following a 30th anniversary tour in 2009 featuring six of the seven original members, the lineup is now down to a core three — singer Terry
Hall, guitarist Lynval Golding and bassist Horace Panter (keyboardist Jerry Dammers, singer Neville Staple and guitarist Roddy ‘Radiation’ Byers quit following the initial reunion, and drummer John Bradbury died in 2015). As such, “Encore” offers a grab bag of material — taking in a bit of loose funk, spoken word and covers. Like the original band faced down Thatcherism, the new album finds the group wrestling with modern societal ills in tracks like “BLM,” exploring racism, and “The Life and Times (of a Man Called Depression),” in which Hall addresses his own mental health issues (he attempted suicide in 2004).
It’s not as stylistically focused as the group’s early albums, veering from a wah-wah-pedal-accented disco version of Eddy Grant and the Equals’ 1970 track “Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys” to the stark “10 Commandments,” which finds 20-year-old activist Saffiyah Khan throwing out a feminist response to Prince Buster’s misogynistic 1965 recording “Ten Commandments of Man.” But even without the involvement of principal songwriter Dammers, the spirit of the original lineup lurks in the background. The moody “Vote for Me” feels like a close cousin of the single “Ghost Town,” while the group revisits “The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum” by the original post-Specials band Fun Boy Three, giving it a sleek upgrade.