There's *much* better from Youth, right here on eMusic. This is such a catch-all that it's hard to listen to. The singing that (fortunately) is only on the first track is awful enough, but the out-of-tune harmonical noodling later is really awful. It does pick up, as noted, but you should look for the Blood and Fire collection and get that first.
This is beautiful, righteous roots music. The album picks up momentum as it goes along, including some nice dubs at the end.
Despite the fire and brimstone that characterized reggae's revolutionary emergence in the 1970s, I have always had an abiding affection for the evolutionary period that immediately preceded that breakthrough, when the music seemed caught between two worlds. The style is usually referred to as rocksteady - post-Ska, but still experimenting with and expanding the possibilities of that one-drop, loping afterbeat; and though Rastafarian ideology was already beginning to swiftly gospelize the music (anthemed most notably… more »
