Madness

The flippant music of Madness casts a dark shadow over the compositions of Kaiser Chiefs and Gwen Stefani, but unlike their contemporaries Gang of Four, they don’t have anything new to say to make their presence known to the new kids on the block, or even those who have followed them from the beginning. Their latest, a collection of covers titled The Dangerman Sessions Volume 1, may cause even die-hard fans of Madness to cringe, and not because they are singing about “a woman but talks like a man,” as they do in their cover of The Kinks’ “Lola.” Then again, the way these 80’s one-hit wonders differentiated themselves from The Specials was not singing about turning bombs into plowshares, but by making exuberant, vigorous music intent on taking the fun one step beyond.

The album, with its thirteen cheeky ska-ified covers, ranks high in the year’s list of top ten most pointless albums, right alongside the Brittney Spears’ remix album and The Best of Fuel. Paying tribute to its Motown influences (“You Keep Me Hanging On”) and the consistent reggae flavor that has remained a stimulus throughout the group’s more than 25 years of work (Bob Marley’s “So Much Trouble in the World”), the ensemble comes up short of the comeback devotees have been waiting for, making cool classics sound more like Me First and the Gimme-Gimmies than a proper homage. Inventiveness will help Madness show the new wave revivalists how it was done back in the day, instead of losing respect and falling on their faces in front of the students.