Signing Off

Named after the unemployment benefit form and sleeved like the card itself, UB40's debut turned Jamaican reggae into a document of dole-queue Britain, sung by a mixed-race Birmingham band who had lived the paperwork.

"Food for Thought" opens with a saxophone line that hangs in the air like something remembered rather than played, and its "Ivory Madonna" swipes at Christmas charity while children starve elsewhere \u2014 politics carried on a groove slow enough to sway to. "Madam Medusa" spends its length circling Thatcher without ever letting the anger tip into shouting, and "King" mourns Martin Luther King in the same unhurried register. The trick throughout is patience: these are long, dubby songs that refuse to hurry their arguments, trusting the bass and the horns to keep you there. That refusal to sloganeer is why the record still sounds like reporting rather than ranting.