Redlight

With rare exceptions, ska bands are not given the opportunity to sell out. For every Mighty Mighty Bosstones (who eventually ended up on Mercury), there are scores of ska and ska-punk bands that never leave the indies. When New York trad-ska mavens the Slackers signed to Hellcat (the ska and punk imprint of Epitaph), that was about as close as it gets to a major-label defection. And tellingly, it didn’t affect their sound at all: on their first release for that label, we get highlights like “Cooking for Tommy” (classic 1950s jazz-ska); “Married Girl” (a typically sardonic reflection on doomed romance from bandleader Vic Ruggiero, with a strong Latin inflection); and “Tin Tin Deo” (a melodica-and-horns-driven rock steady instrumental that could have been recorded in 1968).