Present Arms

This the second album from UB40 is an intoxicating pleasure, representing, along with Costello's Trust and the Undertones' Positive Touch, one of your humble correspondent's prime hit-picks of the season thus far.

UB40 music is not domestic, it is imbued with great warmth and depth of character, it is rounded and complete and it can simultaneously fire you up and cool you out. The usefulness of their understatement, the subtlety of their subversion, the magic of their measured melodies – UB40 are some kind of wonderful.

Present Arms is the first great summer sound of 1981 but it avoids more songs about surfing and cars. This is not a minor achievement. The people in UB40 are aware, concerned and in touch but they don't flaunt their revolution rock. They avoid the pitfalls of melodramatic breast-beating and trite sloganeering – the twin bogey of many a 'politically conscious' rock band – and make their points in an altogether more approachable and conversational manner. They open up the channels of communication rather than cramming them with rhetoric. They leave the listener space to breath and think. The music is open-ended and delicious.

This is not to say that UB40 are laid-back or peripheral. Their music is never less than commanding and at times it can be intensely moving. 'Lamb's Bread', the album's closing track is a case in point. Here, their melodic pop invention is sharply defined, their rhythms strong and hypnotic and the result is incantory and incandescent music.

Superficially, UB40's music might not seem to burn but instead it glows – brightly and indefinitely. Linton's description of a certain kind of reggae fits the UB40 mood perfectly. He spoke of the musics 'mellow steady flow' and that is exactly right.

There are so many good things on Present Arms and they all fit together so precisely that it seems churlish to nominate highlights, but on an even cursory inspection, songs like the aforementioned 'Lamb's Bread', the trademark burnished brass and high-stepping rhythm of the title-track and the lengthy version of the single 'Don't Let It Pass You By', with its teasing, tickling dubonics and its reasoned talkover, are uniformly irresistible – your body moves your face smiles, your mind hums with ideas. Plus! You get a bonus 12" to boot.

The term 'righteous' is oft-misinterpreted and sorely-abused, but UB40 understand its essence better than most. At a time when a whole heap of wind-up step on the streets' UB40 have mined the teenage wastelands and unearthed a shining nugget. Uplifting, soulful, spiritual music – it makes honest sense and you can dance to it. Present Arms is all about positive vibrations and the more of those we can get the better. Don't let it pass you by.