Record Label: Special Potato
Genre: Ska
Band Link: link
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The Slackers have teamed up with LA DJ Boss Harmony and decided to put a jam session together. Four score and seven years later, “The Boss Harmony” sessions are the product of that collaboration.

With “The Boss Harmony Sessions” there are some new songs, there are some old songs, there are some covers…all which equal up to a good time and a quality listen. Although the album doesn’t come together as well as your prototypical Slackers album, it does have that old school Slackers sound with a touch of the Trojan-era ska and reggae stylings.

You may recognize some old Slackers tunes such as “Feed My Girl” but you may not recognize them due to the mad scientist mix-mastering of DJ Boss Harmony. You may also recognize a few choice cover tunes such as Dylan and Nash’s “Wanted Man” or Three Dog Night’s ” Mama Told Me”. What you may not recognize are the new songs that round off the rest of “The Boss Harmony Sessions”. Yes, this is indeed a new Slackers album although you may have not thought so. Soon to be classic tracks pop up every now and then in the likes of “Lil Joe”, “Robots” and “Body Double”.

Upon first listen, I wasn’t immediately hooked to “The Boss Harmony Sessions” but after another listen or two, I started to get into the groove and really enjoy the ebb-and-flow of what I was listening to. You could consider these sessions a throwback album with a modern flavor. As I mentioned before, there was surely an effort by the Slackers to go back to ska’s roots and put forth a more traditional sounding album. The Slackers never ventured too far from their trad-ska roots in the first place, but this album doesn’t sound like an attempt to imitate that sound…instead “The Boss Harmony Sessions” sounds like Slackers did the time warp and released this album in or around 1968 and we are just now discovering it. Now it’s your time to discover it. Go now!

Bottom Line: This is what the Slackers would have sounded like if they had formed in the 60’s…pretty much the same only different.
Notable Tracks: El Gato, Feed My Girl Ska, Lil Joe, Body Double, Wanted Man, Yer Still Blue
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