The Selecter: 'It’s an absolute miracle that we have 12 original songs on the album that’s been getting a lot of love'

You are touring the UK again April and May. Are you looking forward to playing live here again?

Very much so. We were at the on tour a year ago with From The Jam and we were just demoing some songs then from our new album Human Algebra and we were sitting in the dressing room listening to them saying that they’d work live on stage. Now we can come back and it’s out and we can play the songs in our show.

On April 27 you play at the Stylus at Leeds University. You must have played up here many times over the years. Can you remember your first show here?

That would have been on the Two Tone Tour. At all of those places on the tour there was sweat dripping down the wall. They were the favoured dance halls and that’s where the Two Tone music went down the best.

What about your set list. Have you had any thoughts about what you will play?

We will be doing a few songs from the new album. Last autumn we were supposed to be going out and doing a tour to mark the Celebrate The Bullet album but that couldn’t take place due to illness at the time but now fortunately we are over all of that so we will do more from Celebrate The Bullet too as well as all of our well known songs too.

You have a new album, Human Algebra out on April 21. How do you feel ahead of its release?

I think that it’s an absolute miracle that we have 12 original songs on the album that’s been getting a lot of love from the magazines. The video for the title track has been released and it’s been getting such a positive reaction so it’s a great calling card for the album. It’s been received wonderfully well. We’ll be doing Human Algebra, War, War, War and Stop Them on the tour.

Lyrically, you’ve always tackled social commentary and political issues. There’s plenty of material to work with since your last record. What issues have you covered in your lyrics this time?

We’re looking at knife crime on Human Algebra, Scandalous is about our current government and you just couldn’t make that up, and also Big Little Lies and Armchair Guevara have a political theme too. When we wrote War War War no-one could have known that it would still be going on this year. Stop Them is a song about green issues and Star Fell Out Of The Blue is a metaphor for Brexit. We also have songs about relationship problems too.

How did original drummer, Charley ‘Aitch’ Bembridge end up back in the band after 40 years away?

He’s been back since 2021 and it’s made such a difference. It’s just fabulous and everything has just gelled so well. The previous drummer had an epiphany during lockdown and decided he didn’t want to be a drummer any more so we just called Aitch and he answered the call and he’s back in the band. We just picked up where we left off.

What does he bring to The Selecter?

He brings the original sound to the band. Aitch drums in a very specific way. I think it’s because he started off playing bass. What Aitch does on the hi-hat and the way he places the off-beat is just magic. You can just sit back to that and everything flows.

The Selecter originally came to prominence during the resurgence of Ska in the around the turn of the 80s. What were your initial musical influences that inspired you to create music yourself?

I came to singing through folk clubs. If you were a Black female singer you had one of two routes in music, either in a reggae band or as a folk singer, so I was a folk singer for about 18 months and I met some people who knew The Coventry Automatics who ended up becoming The Specials and they were in a reggae band and they said they could do something with me so I got to know a different group of musicians. I’d always been aware of ska and reggae and I liked what they were doing.

The Selecter along with The Specials and The Beat were at the forefront of the ska revival and you were all from the Midlands. What was the musical environment like in the Midlands at that time?

Coventry and Birmingham had a big car industry back then and they needed people to work in their factories and immigration is good for that so there had been a lot of people coming in from the Caribbean and they people brought their musical influences with them and it became really popular as a result.

You had several Top 40 hits including a couple of Top 10 singles 20 singles across your initial two album, three-year reign. How did you feel when your single On My Radio hit the Top 10?

Top of the Pops was all very strange as you had to re-record your song due to Musicians Union rules but at some point there’d be a sleight of hand by the record company and they’d replace the new recording with the original version. So we found that strange and also we discovered that you had to mime to your own song. What was good though was meeting the other bands on at the same time. I remember The Nolan Sisters were on when we were on. Top of the Pops was a great leveller. Anyone could come on whether they were cool or not. That seems to have gone now and music isn’t as interesting for that reason.

Your first album Too Much Pressure was released on the legendary Two Tone label. How important was that label on the growth of ska?

The label and the iconography of the little figure, helped to bring it all together in one package for everyone to get on board. It really captured the imagination of the youth at the time and gave them a voice. There was something for everybody, whether it was the politics or social commentary or the nutty dance, everyone could enjoy it. It was fun as well as having a social perspective.

Two Tone and ska was more than just a form of music, it was a social movement as well?

The thing about Two Tone is that it brought Black and white people together in a way that was much wider than just music. It went into the fabric of society. Ska music celebrated the things that united us not the things that divide us and there were elements in society pushing in the other direction.

The title track for your second record, Celebrate The Bullet, succeeded in getting banned by Mike Read from Radio 1. What happened there?

Well, that wasn’t by design. Poor old John Lennon had just been shot and shortly afterwards Ronald Reagan and breakfast DJs at that time were not going to play a song called Celebrate The Bullet after that had just happened.

Not many people know that you are a qualified radiographer. Do you ever wonder how your life would have turned out if you stayed on that career path instead of music?

Not really, although I did used to wonder for the first five years of being in the music business if I`d have to return to my day job but fortunately I didn`t have to do.

What do you have lined up for the rest of the year once your UK tour ends?

We`ll be playing to as many people as we can over the summer at some festivals and we`ll also be playing at Wembley Stadium with Blur in July.

Human Algebra is out now. The Selecter play at Leeds University Stylus on April 27.