Guilty ’Til Proved Innocent! by The Specials

Guilty 'til Proved Innocent!, a 1998 release on MCA, was the first album of new Specials songs since 1984, written by original members and newcomers alike. Jerry Dammers was long gone, but Neville Staple, Roddy Byers, Lynval Golding and Horace Panter were back, joined by Mark Adams, Adam Birch and Jon Read, with Selecter drummer Charley 'H' Bembridge behind the kit.

Nobody was going to mistake it for the 1979 records, and the comparisons came as surely as rain in Coventry, but it went down much better than the covers set Today's Specials and was widely hailed as a return to form. The ska skank is sturdy and the playing tight, and there's a nod to their own history in "Running Away", which borrows from Toots & the Maytals' "Monkey Man", a song they'd covered on their debut. "It's You" was the single pushed to modern rock radio.

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