How do you capture the power and spirit of your live show when going from a sweaty, fan-filled club to a frosty, sterile studio? If you're the Slackers, you use the stage as your studio. When the veteran New York ska/reggae band tracked the bedrock for their new studio disc, Peculiar, that's exactly what they did.

With a batch of new tracks, some social and political songs, others touching on family and loved ones, the Slackers returned to one of their favorite haunts, Ernesto's in Sittard, Holland, where they've cut a pair of live albums. In front of another batch of sweaty, easy-skanking Dutch ska freaks, the band cut the core of Peculiar, the rhythm tracks. After stripping out the rhythm tracks from Ernesto's, the Slackers overdubbed vocals, horns and guest spots from the likes of Alex Desert of Hepcat back home at ex-Slacker Jeff "King Django" Baker's New Jersey studio, and in L.A., where they used some of the very instruments heard on some of Motown's later-era classics. As a result the band has blended the best of both worlds: the clarity and balance of a studio record with the spirit and fever they've generated onstage across the globe for nearly 15 years. In the spirit of the great ska, reggae and punk of the '70s, out of which the band's sound was born, Peculiar reflects Americans - and, specifically, New Yorkers - growing displeasure with the leadership (or lack thereof) coming from Washington in songs like "International War Criminal" and "Propaganda." In its packaging and design, the album embraces the vibe of a freak show, via vintage 20th Century photos snapped at New York's best slice of Americana weirdness: the forever trashy and tack and forever American Coney Island. It works on multiple levels: Some of Peculiar's more political fare embodies the very essence of what it is to be an American challenging authority and speaking your mind so what better for a bunch of New Yorkers to represent their country and culture with than the Big Apple's funkiest slice of Americana. What's more, the band has always sort of felt like a bunch of freaks, playing these out-of-time Jamaican musics, says Pine, so why not portray that through out-of-time Coney Island freakshow photos? Building a diverse catalog, with Jamaican music as its foundation, and after spending more than half the year on the road on average, the band has built one of the most diverse audiences of its generation. You'll find families, rudies, rastas, punks and everything in between at a Slackers show. You'll see the hardcore Agnostic Front freak who spends his Sunday afternoons grooving with his girl to Slackers records. And after a decade, the mission is still very much the same. "We try to stay within our influences," says Ruggiero. "We love those sounds, those beautiful sounds. It's a great music to write over, a great beat to write over, between reggae and ska, you can do everything you can do in rock, and on top of it, people can dance."