UB40
Labour of Love II

THE REVIEW

UB40 (Unemployment Benefit Form 40, the form to fill out to get funds in case of unemployment in the UK at the end of the '70s) was a pop/reggae group I know very little about. And what I do know, I discovered yesterday. In 1989, they released their second album with covers, "Labour Of Love II", about which I can say a bit more.

It's not that I've analyzed it thoroughly or that I've been committed to the search for detailed information. When it comes to such essential pop, based on understated percussion, synth, and a street-smart voice lent to successful music, it bothers me to look for good intentions and wonders that ultimately aren't there. Because (also) this is music made specifically to be the soundtrack of specific moments of adolescence. You realize this when you're at sunset in a beach bar, sitting in front of what used to be your classmates, in a circle of glances that pierce the skin. You remember them all as younger, sitting more or less in the same positions. The setting is identical, except for a few more coats of paint. The stories change. But at that point, who cares. Because the music (specifically this album) helps to clear overthoughts and bring everyone on the same wavelength, while the water quietly laps on the shore nearby. The people in front of you talk, and a lot, but it doesn't take long to remember those two who are locking eyes and who are now married to different people. They made out fervently full of love when, on a summer night fifteen years earlier, during the school closing party, the song “Wedding Day” was playing. You can trace the indiscreet gaze of that other person always aimed at the top of the bikini of the group's pin-up who, despite the years, jiggles just like when dancing to “Groovin’” that same evening, where many saw the first joints of their lives come around. There are glances of understanding and toasts on the flowing notes of the CD that I brought to break the ice. The innocent and simple music (a great merit, if we consider what Bruno Munari – for example – said about simplicity) of a group whose members initially didn’t even know how to play and gradually learned the basics, after long sessions around small studios in their hometown. Birmingham.

The little musical skill is evident in songs without great pretensions, built on few notes, but aimed at that part of the gray matter that stores the information not to feed to oblivion. A reggae (I admit that I don’t like the genre at all in its most serious and meaningful manifestations) that's cheap but managed to sell millions of copies and place two singles (from this album) in the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 of the time: “Here I Am (Come And Take Me)” – a song by gospel man Al Green – and “The Way You Do The Things You Do” – a piece by The Temptations, a band of black dancers and vocalists popular in the '60s. In short, white men seeking the black Afro magic, who hit the mark both when interpreting others' songs and when writing them themselves.

I wouldn't recommend this album to anyone except those few who have lived stories that today we would define as ambient of that time, or those who think that a couple of ice cubes in their memory could bring to light intense campfires of that part of life in crescendo, when you feel like God and have the strength to carry the fortunes of about thirty people around the birthplace and around the world, between trips and departures in small groups.

I too have a crossed glance, the kind that burns the hair. Even today, I wouldn't care about the nose that isn't the best considering the not-so-gentle bridge. But those eyes that reek of life preserver and the vivacity I would have married without a second thought lead me to lower my gaze and follow the line of the shoulder, then the arm, ending at the hand. Now holding another hand.

Oh Kingston Town / The place I long to be / If I had the whole world / I would give it away / Just to see / the girls at play / Ooh, ooh, ooh. There’s little left to dream, after the melancholy of Kingston Town (a great piece), with the flavor of sugar-free blackberry jam. Enough with the flights of fancy, back to reality. But some damn music, still has something truly good.