UB40’s Refined Reggae

Over the past decade UB40 has refined its brand of reggae to the point that it hardly relates to the rest of the genre. Friday at the Universal Amphitheare, UB40 showed neither the will nor the wherewithal to do the job. Not that it doesn’t do a job quite well. Its trademark sinewy lope, a knack for the occasional killer hook and an affection for reggae’s American soul roots (the focus of the current “Labourof Love II” album) has made it perhaps the most successful reggae band in pop.

But nothing on Friday countered the common complaints about UB40: As great as some songs, like the horn-punched “If It Happens Again,” are, there’s a sameness to the band’s sound; Ali Campbell’s voice is pleasant but thin, painfully so on some of the soul oldies, and the flashes of brilliance only make the relative mediocrity of the rest of the material more frustrating.