Smoke & Mirrors Sound System - Return Of The Numbers (Escape Hatch Records)

The album’s cover art instantly calls to mind a poster for ‘Hombre’, the 1967 western directed by Martin Ritt and starring Paul Newman. Musically, the album delivers exactly what we’ve come to expect and crave from Smoke & Mirrors: a delicious cocktail of ska, rocksteady, reggae, dub, and even a hint of cumbia, all served up by some of the finest players in the American ska and reggae scene.

The album kicks off with the punchy ska energy of opener ‘Eight Hours A Day’, and follows up with the instrumental ‘Victory Garden’, cut from the same cloth, with standout performances by Buford O’Sullivan on trombone (Scofflaws, Easy Star All-Stars) and David Hillyard on saxophone.

And then there’s ‘Wolf Clothes’, a track as biting as it is groovy. Vocalist Tori Roze takes aim at a society where wolves no longer even bother with sheep’s clothing, and worse, where people willingly follow them. The message feels like a pointed critique of the current political and social climate in the US, but as always, it’s up to the listener to decide:

Propaganda has become your only testament
The Grifters have their rook
Believing lies, so they’re making you their instrument
You bit their baited hook.

You plug your ears to the scientific argument
Cause you don’t want to know
Are you afraid, or just blissfully ignorant?
Cause you make quite a show

The time will come
You won’t know when
Your life of luxury will turn to dust
When your charade
Comes to an end,
You’ll see you’re just like us

You’re in the room,
But you never see the elephant
That’s right in front of you
You double down
And the truth becomes irrelevant
You’re in lock step on cue.

Nothing can sway you
And there’s no amount of evidence
Cause you’re completely sure
It’s never medicine
Just guns in your cabinet,
Cause you don’t need no cure

With the instrumental ‘Mala Salud’ (Spanish for “bad health”), Smoke & Mirrors briefly immerses us in warm cumbia vibes.

A definite highlight on the track list is ‘Nothing To Lose’, featuring Dunia Best Sinnreich (Agent 99, Rude Girl Revue) on lead vocals, with excellent supporting parts by Mark Lyn of The Slackers and David Moxley.

Loving Paupers-vocalist Kelly Di Filippo lends her voice to the beautifully dreamy ‘Motive’, where Andy Geib’s flute and trombone also shine in subtle supporting roles. Another personal favourite is the breakup tune ‘A Price To Pay’, with John Roy himself taking the lead on vocals.

The album concludes with the rhythm & blues-flavoured ‘Under That Rock’, a sarcastic portrait of an angry conspiracy theorist individual whose denial of reality and public outbursts starkly reveal how divided America is today:

I saw you at the supermarket, spewing hate
You’re yelling at the neighbours, cause you’re so irate
I don’t know how your yelling makes the country great
When did you crawl out from under that rock?

The rage inside you simmered for a dozen years,
And now you’ve got conspiracies to feed your fears
He blows a dog whistle and you prick your ears
That’s when you crawl out from under that rock

Life is a collection of failures, that you’ll never own yourself
If reality you see is too much for you,
You can always blame someone else

You had to have a tantrum in a coffee shop
You screamed like a toddler and you wouldn’t stop
They caught it all on video. Today it dropped
You should crawl back under that rock

You won’t believe the doctors that are warning you
You think it’s just the media controlling you
You won’t believe it , even if it’s killing you,
So you’ll be buried under that rock

You think you’re so entitled
You’re just a punchline to a bad joke
There’ll be tears in your eyes when you realize
That it’s all gone up in smoke

With ‘Return Of The Numbers’, Smoke & Mirrors Sound System cements its place as one of our favourite musical exports from the US, and that’s not about to change anytime soon!