The Specials - Encore

The Guardian 60

Amid disputes over the group’s authenticity, Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Horace Panter are best when sounding both anthemic and doom-laden

An interesting question hangs over the first album by the Specials since their reunion in 2008: is it actually an album by the Specials? Singer Neville Staple and guitarist Roddy Byers have left, and drummer John Bradbury died as sessions for the album began in 2015. There are fewer members of the band’s classic lineup on Encore than there were in the version of the Specials that sporadically toured and cobbled together albums of ska covers in the 90s. Still, there are more members of the classic lineup here than on In the Studio, the 1984 Special AKA album commonly regarded as canonical.

Related: Chalkie Davies’s best photograph: the Specials in Paris