In the second half of the gig, when the backdrop disappears to spotlight 72 choristers from Voicelab, the Wailers’ five-man unit will have been ‘bigged’ up beyond expectation. As is apparent from the new scores of ‘Concrete Jungle’ and ‘400 Years’ this expanded palette serves a dual purpose: to show the absolute richness of the melodies penned by Marley and Peter Tosh and to push their harmonic implications into logical and unforeseen places. While double bassist-bandleader Gary Crosby (pictured above with Jason Yarde), and drummer Rod Youngs nail the offbeat down pat, Jason Yarde’s arrangements are imperious. His blend of full-bodied, singing motifs and stark, flinty interludes, particularly for the strings, captures and bolsters the melancholia and menace of the source material, as Forde makes an impressive fist of giving the original words requisite emotional depth and tonal precision. However, the sharpest twist in the tale of what proves a joyous, out-of-the seat performance is the subtext of classic R&B freighted in the leisurely but heavy punch of the music. It becomes explicit in the puckish quotes of ‘One Mint Julep’ that fit the easy skanking like a glove. A Ray Charles fan like Marley would’ve been irie.

– Kevin Le Gendre