Stream: The English Beat, ‘How Can You Stand There?’

S.Lo on August 3rd, 2018

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Dave Wakeling & Ranking Roger of the English Beat

Dave Wakeling, Ranking Roger, Andy Cox, Everett Morton and first-wave ska legend Saxa (the late saxophonist Lionel Augustus Martin) were the working-class boys of Brummie (Birmingham, U.K.), touting two-tone ska from Northern England in ’79 as the festive and socially conscious band the Beat (aka the English Beat in the U.S.). They mixed a truly original and inclusive blend of reggae, punk, pop and soul with a distinct sound that stood out as their own.

Fast forward nearly four decades and many incarnations later, frontman Dave Wakeling has kept the flame alive, reuniting the band in 2003 and penning more than enough new songs to fill a brand new album. After a hugely successful fan-funding campaign, he joined with producer Kyle Hoffmann and mixing engineer Jay Baumgardner at NRG studio in Los Angeles to lay the tracks down (also recording some vocals at his current home in Southern California whenever the spirit struck him), and the original vibrancy of the English Beat shines through in the digital age nearly 40 years later in “Here We Go Love.”

A lot of new contemplations and observations about relationships and politics have stacked up over those years. And Wakeling has found the current political times to be as good as any to air out some of his thoughts with a pop-ska twist. With notable contributions from Roddy “Radiation” Byers of the Specials and the Skabilly Rebels, Train guitarist Luis Maldonado and backing vocalists Kevin Williams and Jelani Jones, Wakeling sings with as much earnestness as during ’70s-’80s Thatcherism in the U.K. as he rails against today’s alarming political apathy in the lead track “How Can You Stand There?” He delves into narcissism, redemption, the uselessness of warfare and the ups and downs of relationships over time over the course of the album, which ends on a high note of lasting love with the feel-good reggae-pop jam “Be There For You.”

Guided with some wisdom from the past and propelled by positive thoughts on how to keep the world together into the future, “Here We Go Love” is a fine ship for the English Beat to sail into this strange new millennium.

||| Stream: “How Can You Stand There”