The Specials - More Specials
#406
by Tom Mott
October 4 1980
The Specials
More Specials
Genre: Punk Muzak
Allen’s Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Tom’s Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Highlights:
Do Nothing
Sock It to 'Em J.B.
Stereotypes
International Jet Set
The Specials debut album from a year earlier is justly famous as one of the quintessential ska albums of the era. Jerry Dammers and Terry Hall aren't the Lennon and McCartney of The Specials. They're more like the Lennon and Lennon, shoving each other around.
For this second album, Jerry Dammers was determined to forge ahead into new territory: canned cha-cha beats from the organ shop at the local mall, 60s film scores, northern soul, easy listening, and yes, ska. The easy listening isn't even the Tijuana Brass. More like the Baja Marimba Band, or those all those Montovani albums gathering dust in Grandma's condo. The Specials were on the road to super-stardom, but Jerry Dammers grabbed the wheel and forced them over the edge of the cliff. It could've been a wreck. Instead, he created a new bumpy road and delivered a gloriously defiant album that predates the 90s exotica and lounge music revival by a good 15 years. (And DEVO's E-Z Listening Muzak Cassette by a year.) An album that can play in the background, and when you focus on it from time to time, you realize how weird it is. And how weird all that old easy listening muzac is too. Parts of it point towards their 1981 single "Ghost Town" but then those cha-cha beats and cheesy organ riffs creep back in.
People like to be in on the joke, but More Specials never lets you know if there's a punch line or not. It's smart, playful, ironic, fun, sensuous, stupid, silly, and bleak. The album is book-ended by two versions of Enjoy Yourself. The first version is an upbeat ska raver that manages to have a sense of foreboding that time is running out. The reprise is morose: time has run out. We're either nursing our morning hangovers, or hunkered down in our bunkers waiting for the bombs to drop. A great and somewhat overlooked album
