New Music Friday: Ian Brown, The Specials, White Lies

Today sees the release of albums from Ian Brown, The Specials and White Lies on New Music Friday – check them out on Live4ever via Spotify below.

Ripples is Ian Brown’s first solo LP since 2009’s My Way, and since the apparent end of the Stone Roses reunion in 2017. As well as lead single First World Problems, it contains covers of Barrington Levy’s Black Roses and Break Down The Walls by Mikey Dread, and three songs co-written with his sons.

Encore marks the end of a much longer gap between albums for The Specials, one containing tracks written and produced by founding members Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Horace Panter, including Vote For Me which recently became the first new Specials single since 1981’s UK Ghost Town.

And White Lies are back today with Five, one on which Live4ever said the band ‘have managed to release themselves from the shackles of their successful but increasingly distant past to make an album that, ironically, comes closest to the high level of their debut’:

“The cunningly titled Five brings all the ingredients of their once-successful recipe to the boil, with some new garnishes for good measure. It’s book-ended in epic fashion.”