Better Days cover

Better Days

The Heptones

Recorded

1981

Released

1978

Better Days contains some of the songs for which the Heptones remain best known: their surprisingly compelling cover of “Suspicious Minds,” “God Bless the Children,” and their equally fine version of Tommy James and the Shondells’ “Crystal Blue Persuasion.” The Niney Holness/ Harry J’s production style is conventional and straightforward, a dramatic departure from the more swampy and experimental sound they’d gotten from Lee “Scratch” Perry at the Black Ark for their Party Time album the year before.