Album review: Madness’ Can’t Touch Us Now has bright characters

Having long expanded from their ska-punk beginnings, the band is deft in a wide array of styles and rhythms, blending pop, soul and reggae.

Can't touch us now by British band Madness.
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Can’t Touch Us Now

Madness

(UMe)

Three stars

Can't Touch Us Now is an invitation into the Madness carnival of sounds, brimming with intriguing, colourful characters. One of the most British and energetic of performers, Madness bring the goods in familiarly entertaining fashion, sustaining the strong resurgence on their third album since 2009. Having long expanded from their ska-punk beginnings, the band is deft in a wide array of styles and rhythms, blending pop, soul and reggae. The lyrics carry plenty of whimsy and nostalgia, and if the tunes drag a bit here and there, there's enough energy to feed the festivities. Songwriting duties of the 16 tracks are spread out among the band, now a sextet after the departure of multi-instrumentalist Chas Smash. Lead singer Suggs contributes touching portraits of Amy Winehouse ("the voice of fallen angels") on Blackbird and of a legendary West End homeless woman on Pam the Hawk, whose "toothless smile laughs like a machine gun" as she pours her coins in slot machines. The lead single, Mr. Apples, is a less sympathetic but wholly believable depiction of a wholesome citizen by day who spends his nights on the wrong side of town. Herbert is a terrified ode to an overprotective father-in-law who guards his daughter with a shotgun – the Ian Dury-like rhymes (hotelier/derrière, Herbert/sherbet) amplify the fun. Dressed in top hats and dark capes, "older and grey" they may be, as the slightly lunatic Soul Denying describes, but Madness can still be counted on to please.

* Pablo Gorondi / Associated Press