The Specials Album: “More Specials”

Odd collection of tunes, more polished and varied than their first disc. Memorable and unique songs that stick with you. I've been listening to this stuff for 20 years and it doesn't grow old.

More Specials is the type of album that I just can't say bad things about. Compared to the music being forced down our throats these days, music that doesn't know where it's going or is too wimpy to say anything, More Specials is a bright spot in a better past. Listen to it, not comparing it to the Specials first, but with an ear for quality. There's a lot there.

"International Jet Set" has probably become my favorite track. I also prefer the LP version of "Do Nothing" to the singles version. At first I kind of thought a couple of the tracks were annoying, but listening to a song as a whole instead of in parts reveals it's true quality. An underrated album for sure.

I agree with everybody else that the first Specials album was probably the greatest ska album ever--a fist-pumping pleasure from beginning to end. However, I cannot help but admire Jerry Dammers' artistic courage in refusing to repeat himself, and instead driving the band into new territory on this album. The result was a unique work--incorporating hard ska, dub, lounge singing, and muzak (!) influences into one really strange trip of a record.

Like the first record, it is a journey from beginning to end. But while the debut album was a studio recreation of a live gig, this is a dyspeptic trip into studio hell, opening with a lively cover of the standard "Enjoy Yourself", and ending in a sardonic port-mortem version of the same. In between the band meanders through all sorts of studio space, harsh and mellow, on their way to their ultimate demise, with the same biting lyrics (but darker here) and great playing that the band displayed on its debut.

It's fantasticly weird art-rock album, done by the world's best ska band. It's a terrific companion to the first record, and if the band pretty much dissolved afterward at least they finished playing their "A" game, in my opinion. If you wanted a repeat of the first record, well, small wonder that you're disappointed. But then, you would have been anyway.

I find that as I get older, one of the few 80's recordings that continues to interest me is The Specials "More Specials". The songs are more subtle - not the ear candy of their first recording.The songs Stereotype and Do Nothing are still fresh and pleasing to this ear. I liked it then and I like it now. Only a handfull of recordings from my youth have stood the test of time so well. That is why after selling my LP's, I am buying More Specials on CD!

I understand that they were trying to do something different that the original album but it is such a departure from the original album