Rob’s Album Of The Week: The Skints’ Swimming Lessons

What’s the difference between “tropical punk” and ska punk? It could be the structure and sound that separates it from other musical styles. It could also have something to do with the origin of where the music is from. The former is what The Skints from London identify themselves as and an excellent representation of it is in their fourth album, Swimming Lessons, that was released on May 10 via the indie labels Easy Star Records & Mr. Bongo. The band melds the rhythmic ska and reggae traditions of the country they call home with hard rock, jazz and progressive tones.

It definitely has to be said that this quartet has a lot more melody and harmony than a typical band with punk influences. It’s also pretty punk to express originality with any kind of art regardless of what the end product is. Those harmonies come from the vocal talents of Marcia Richards, Jamie Kyriakides and Joshua Waters Rudge. Kyriakides also backs up the rhythms on drums with bassist Jonathan Doyle while Rudge brings the amplification on guitar. Richards shows how multi-dimensional she can be by also playing the saxophone, melodica and keyboards.

People can’t say today’s music is boring when there’s a case to be made that there are more styles being fused together now than ever before. It’s both refreshing and mind-blowing how a band can put an different…