Unless, of course, they can write songs.
Sebastián Teysera, vocalist and main songwriter of Uruguayan eight-piece ska (and more) combo La Vela Puerca (The Huge Joint), can write songs. And La Vela Puerca couldn't care less about the Specials; their main influence is Spain's Extremoduro, the best band you'll never hear. Part folk, part punk, part ska and part murga, they're politically correct, but their social critique is both biting and gentle, both dead serious and humorous and never pretentious. At their most punkish, La Vela show a constructive fury: "I wake up in the morning/I look for the sun under my bed/We know life is hard/But bitterness is not the solution," as they say in "Mañana" ("Tomorrow"), a fast-driving explosion of a song. But it's in their murga extreme that they awaken both the devil and the angel in you at the same time. In "José Sabía," La Vela make a toast to "the pleasure of winning and losing," which is "the good thing about pain," wrapping it up with a loud "when things seem fucked up, it's time to show your balls." Exactly.
