Captain SKA are an unsigned ska band from London, UK. The group are a collective of freelance musicians, led by producer and instrumentalist Jake Painter. They first came to prominence in 2010 with the song ‘Liar Liar’, addressing the politics of contemporary austerity, and the track record of the Liberal Democrat/ Conservative Party coalition that had recently come into power. They have recorded a large number of overtly political singles in the years since, and released a longer project with the Crime EP in 2014.

In May 2017, motivated by the surprise announcement of a general election, they released ‘Liar Liar GE2017’ – an updated remix of their prior record. The new version featured rewritten, highly caustic lyrics, and sampled quotes from Conservative Party leader Theresa May, who was the UK Prime Minister at the time. This track debuted at #4 on the Official UK chart on release. This would prove to be the band’s commercial peak, and the track also granted them a degree of visibility and coverage outside of their usual sphere.

The band cover a range of stylistic ground, largely making upbeat ska tracks, and going into other Jamaican influenced styles, as well as soul and drum and bass. Tracks tend to feature a classic horn and keyboard sound, and dub basslines driving their more electronica influenced tracks. Their tracks typically feature a soulful female vocal, rapping (often from Rubi Dan), and vocal samples that cement the theme – or come directly from the targets of their abrasive lyrics. The songs are largely about headline grabbing issues in the UK Parliament, including condemnation of the character of the politicians involved directly, such as their various versions of ‘Liar Liar’ and tracks such as ‘Fuck Boris’ and ‘Nigel Farage is a Racist’.

The videos are regularly made using collages of video coverage for the topic at hand, typically desaturated and tinted, and featuring the lyrics appearing in time with the song in block fonts. They regularly sample footage from news channels, from talk show coverage and interviews, and tend to feature the clips they’ve sampled audio from. This gives the band’s videos an easily recognised montage style. While the band haven’t yet released any album-length projects (though one is currently being crowdfunded), a vast majority of their tracks are released with a video. This approach seems to be geared toward giving each track (and the matters discussed within) its time in the spotlight, each coming with a call to action, to share them around with a demand for change.

In 2017, for the release of ‘Liar Liar GE2017’, band members Christy Kulz and Jake Painter co-wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian, where they discuss censorship, public attitudes to political speech, and generally lay out some points on the band’s mission:

‘Liar Liar GE2017 is certainly an anomaly in the charts due to its subject matter. There are no tantalising sexual lyrics, while the video features a host of Tory politicians instead of scantily clad gyrating women. In an era where young people are always castigated for not engaging with politics as pop culture leads them astray, surely their interest and engagement with politics should be applauded and encouraged rather than censured? This shows that what is regarded as political and who gets the airtime to speak is a deeply embedded issue of power and privilege.

Instead we are urged to tune out of politics and focus on songs about sex, love and breakups. It’s not that these topics aren’t important, but there needs to be room for a richer and wider discussion. Taking an overt political stance via Ska has been embraced by many – perhaps because lots of other folk feel there is too much at stake in this election to just tune out[…]‘