Speaking as someone who grew up with the great 2-Tone Explosion on the cusp of the 1980s, the thought of the inevitable ‘Nu’ Ska Revival is enough to strike fear into the heart, not least when the bands allegedly spearheading this ‘revival’ are the likes of chancers like The Ordinary Boys, Hard-Fi and (the admittedly rather more acceptable) Dead ‘60s.
THE DUALERS, though, actually sound like the real deal. For starters, there’s some history and suss here as the band’s prime movers The Cranstoun Brothers (that’s Si and Tyber C to you and me) are the offspring of the man who set up the legendary 1960s Savoy Sound System club nights in London, so they already have the immortal ‘70s Jamaican sounds running like blue(beat) blood through their veins. Add this to an upbringing stuffed full of Bob Marley, Sam Cooke, The Specials and Skatalites and it’s no surprise that this excellent single genuinely sounds like it could have come from the 2-Tone stable.
Lead track “Don’t Go” is the very essence of sweet, old-style Ska-Pop, running on a summery skank, horns a la Rico/ Dick Cuthell and a unity-fuelled message culminating in the line “better to stand together than on your own!” which is every bit as irresistible as you might imagine.
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Flipside “Taller Than You Are” is another of those ridiculously lazy skanks along the lines of The Specials’ version of “Enjoy Yourself” (“you’re always trying to tell people you’re the best/ but that’s not true when they put you to the test”) which swings by like a late summer breeze and even gets away with a harmonica solo. I ask you.
The very idea of ‘revivals’ as a rule is enough to make this particular hack head for the hills, but if there must be such a spurious thing as another Ska revival, please God let this bunch be the ones we bother with.
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