★★★★★
Like Pixies before them, The Specials' reformation tour seemed to rage on for years but, back in 2009, the announcement that they were reforming for gigs sent ripples through the aged 2-Tone community. OK, so Jerry Dammers wasn't going to be involved, no surprises there - but still, it felt like a victory. Recorded across many of the later 2011 European dates, More... Or Less sounds like a band enjoying themselves...
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
By 1979, with punk's prime movers having either imploded (Sex Pistols) or gone west (The Clash), the prevailing gloom was fuelled by the arrival of one Margaret Hilda Thatcher in Downing Street. A creative ice age was on the horizon, and, for the nation's teenagers, those grim prophecies of "No Future" appeared to be coming true. Until, that is, the arrival of The Specials...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2010-06-19
★★★★★
The sleeve photo of More Specials was taken in a Travelodge in Leamington Spa. Inside the original vinyl LP was a free poster from the same photoshoot, but while this was crisp and sharp, the sleeve looks like it's been made deliberately washed out and blurred - was this an indication of how much the group, exhausted by intensive pan-global touring and then expected to record their second album, was fraying? And there was more evidence of turmoil when you listened to it...
- www.mojo4music.com
2009-07-21
★★★★★
This time they make the ska sound their own by synthesizing its trippy beat and their own inborn vocal attenuation into a single formal principle--a platonic ideal of fun. Especially on side two, the result is so light it's almost ethereal, political consciousness and all.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-17
★★★★★
No text for this review; see http://robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-cg90/grades-90s.php.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
Boom gone bust, everyone restless, no live music cos there's fighting on the dance floor, and the recorded music all ghostly. "Did you really want to kill me?" a victim who's proud of his black skin asks an assailant who's proud of his white. "You make me an angry man." A mild-sounding weekend reveler wishes for lipstick on his shirt instead of piss on his shoes. In short, a recipe for a riot--just in time for the end of the world.
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
If it takes longer than you'd figure for these jingles to get across, that's partly because the ska they don't quite reinvent tends to skip where the reggae that succeeded it dug in, but also partly because their sound, especially their vocal sound, is just to thin to make an immediate impression (compare their "Monkey Man" to Toots's if you dare). In the end, though, there's a jaunty confidence to this music that's a lot less forced than power pop's...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
★★★★★
To understand the impact of this spearhead of the ska revival on early Thatcherite Britain you have to imagine something so left field and yet so apt occurring today. It was as if depression-era dustbowl ballads suddenly became hip again in this era of global economic meltdown. Hardly anyone would have predicted that a musical form so tied to its Afro-Carribean heritage (as well as its less cool skinhead connections) could, almost overnight, become the trendiest thing across the nation...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2009-06-12
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