There’s always a danger such a prolonged hiatus between “official” albums will work against an band, more so when that band is so intrinsically linked with a certain time and place. As The Specials most certainly are. And when that band is missing more than half of its original line-up, well, the task of being relevant and remaining true to its fanbase is especially difficult.
But key foundation personnel Terry Hall, Lynval Golding, and Horace Panter, manage to pull it off with some aplomb on Encore, and the album’s predominant themes - immigration, racism, poverty, urban life, mental health, gun crime, politics, corruption - remain as relevant today as the social issues tackled by the band in the late Seventies and early Eighties.
Plus they get some help, with the indomitable Steve Cradock on guitar, renowned jazz stickman Kenrick Rowe on beats, and much travelled session man Nikolaj Torp Larsen on keys. And of course, there’s the guest vocal appearance of civil rights activist Saffiyah Khan on the reimagined King Tubby classic ‘Ten Commandments’, which she well and truly makes her own.
There’s funk in the form of ‘Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys’, a disco-fied Equals cover, which opens the album, and on ‘BLM’, where Golding’s narrative confronts racism, offering just a few specific examples of the many times he’s been subjected to it over the years.
‘Vote For Me’ and ‘Breaking Point’ are more in the style of the old school ska we’re more used to from The Specials, while ‘The Lunatics’ revisits Hall and Golding’s 1981 Fun Boy Three hit of the same name, and again, it feels even more prescient today - with Brexit, Trump, the rise of right-wing nationalism etc - than it did during the dark days of Thatcher’s regime. If that’s even possible.
The third cover (of the ten “new” tracks on the core album) is an NRA-baiting rejig of ‘Blam Blam Fever’, which was a minor hit in the late Sixties for Jamaican group The Valentines.
Terry Hall’s spoken lament ‘The Life and Times (of a Man Called Depression)’ deals with issues relating to mental health, and it’s probably the best thing here, complete with horns, and an unlikely Doors-referencing keyboard breakdown.
The “bonus” live material comes from two separate gigs, at Le Bataclan (Paris) in 2014, and at The Troxy (London) in 2016. The Paris set includes ‘Gangsters’, ‘A Message To You, Rudy’, ‘Stereotype’, and ‘Ghost Town’, while highlights from the London set include ‘Too Much Too Young’ and a cover of Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’. Plus there’s plenty more.
It’s a veritable feast. The old, the new, the borrowed, and the (chequered) blue. All immaculately packaged and produced for both newcomer and hardcore fan alike. Something close to perfect.
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