Ska 'n' B

The title telegraphs the mission statement: this is Bad Manners situating themselves squarely at the intersection of ska's Jamaican origins and the rhythm-and-blues tradition it grew from, and doing so with a knowingness that doesn't tip into reverence. The production has a deliberate retro weight to it — the reverb on the brass, the bouncing bass line, the rhythm guitar chopping away at every upstroke — but the energy is thoroughly contemporary to the 2-Tone moment, which was always as much about reclaiming that heritage as it was about nostalgia. Buster Bloodvessel moves through the track like a man utterly at home in every sonic register the band offers him, from the lower chest-voice passages to the moments where he erupts upward without warning. There is a looseness to the arrangement that is deceptive — the horns sound improvised but lock together with real precision, the kind of tight-but-untidy feel you can only achieve with a band that has played together long enough to know exactly where the edges are. It works as a kind of musical thesis statement from a group that always seemed more interested in the fun than the politics, even as they were undeniably part of a politically charged movement. This is something you put on when you want to understand where ska actually came from without sitting through a music history lecture — it teaches by feel.