The Specials are a ska group. Yay! I can't wait! ... Yeah, that certainly wasn't my attitude going in. The more I learn about some genres of music I find that a lot are defined by their derivative, and ska sticks out as a particularly annoying example for me. First off, I'm not a reggae fan, and ska seems to hold a lot of reggae roots. Actually it's worse than that... seems to contain a lot of reggae clichés, to the point where I wonder if it meant to be satirical.
Anyhoo, More Specials is thankfully not a ska album. There are certainly ska tracks, but the second half of the album is much better described as new wave (think Talking Heads), which I don't mind so much. There is a lot of flavor in the music. Some of the songs are boppy and goofy, some laid back... one of the songs has a nice mariachi arrangement. My major qualm about the album is the sound. There's nothing wrong with a "crunchy" or unpolished sound, but this album just sounds like it was poorly produced. Still, 3 stars for not boring me to tears like most ska-based musical stuff does.
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