UB40: Labour Of Love III : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Fifteen years after breaking into America with a cover of Neil Diamond's "Red Red Wine," and a few years since they last appeared on the charts, UB40 have returned with their third Labour of Love covers collection. Labour III features primarily obscure reggae songs for material, along with another Neil Diamond cover, "Holly Holy," which makes you wonder whether we're going to have to wait until Labour of Love XVI to hear them do a blue-beat version of "Sweet Caroline." Despite their radical origins in the London punk scene, UB40 have proved to be the Huey Lewis, not Huey Newton, of international reggae sounds: The potent pro-pot message of Peter Tosh's "Legalize It" gets transformed here into a friendly frat-boy stoner anthem. Though the group spices up "Come Back Darling" with lite drum-and-bass beats, even at their most dubwise -- as on their version of "Blood and Fire" -- UB40's electropop riddims are straight out of some dark corner of the Eighties. And though the third installment of Labour of Love features the handiwork of nineteen different songwriters, nearly every song sounds the same. (RS 810)

MATT DIEHL