Saturday, July 16, 2016

CD Odyssey Disc 889: Dropkick Murphys

Through a strange coincidence I was listening to this album on a weekend walk home while wearing a band t-shirt. I had also had a couple of pints, which I imagine is exactly how the Dropkick Murphys want their music enjoyed.

Disc 889 is….Blackout
Artist: Dropkick Murphys

Year of Release: 2003

What’s up with the Cover? Some very bad photoshopping. This cover is likely intended to capture the visceral energy of the Murphys but instead it looks like the cover of some guy’s homemade mixed compilation. Actually, scratch that. I do homemade song compilations all the time and my covers are always better than this.

How I Came To Know It: This was just me buying another Dropkick Murphys album after I discovered them and started mining their back catalogue. I believe this was the third Murphys album I got, after “Sing Loud, Sing Proud” and “The Gang’s All Here” (reviewed back at Disc 704).

How It Stacks Up:  I have seven Dropkick Murphys albums, which isn’t all of them, but it’s close. Of the seven, “Blackout” is the best.

Ratings: 4 stars but almost 5

Listening to “Blackout” always makes me want to see the Dropkick Murphys live. Their raw energy oozes out of this record, angry and triumphant Celtic rock with a punk edge that makes you want to stand up and throw your first in the air.

“Blackout” is the Murphys best-produced album, which might make punk purists cringe. Since the Murphys aren’t strictly punk and I’m not a punk purist, I appreciated the production a lot. There is just no good reason why you should deliberately make your record sound worse than it has to.

Despite the great production the visceral quality of the Murphys shines through. They make you feel like they are throwing a private show in your basement with all your buddies over and despite all the emotion and excitement and the clinking of glasses somehow the sound is still absolutely fucking perfect.

The chord progressions are all pretty standard, but there is a reason 4-5-1 chord progressions are so common; because they sound great.

The Murphys sing about partying hard and fighting injustice and they do both with equal gusto.

The album begins with “Walk Away,” a powerhouse track about a man abandoning his family when things get tough. The track is a hard topic, and the Murphys take no prisoners here, or at any other point on the album.

There are many hard-rocking tracks, among them “The Outcast,” “Buried Alive” and “As One”. There are also more traditional Celtic tracks where the production is stripped down and more narrative (“World Full of Hate”, “The Dirty Glass” and “Fields of Athenry” which are just as awesome, only different.

Soft or hard, all the songs benefit from Al Barr’s signature angry but melodic voice that sounds like a cross between Johnny Rotten and the Corries. They also benefit from some amazing bagpipe playing. The bagpipes are a tough instrument to work into the mix of any pop song, but the Murphys have always been masters of it.  Here they are played by the very capable Spicy McHaggis. This would be Spicy’s last album with the Murphys, after which he is replaced by Scruffy Wallace. I assume in order to play the pipes for the Murphys your first name has to be an adjective. But I digress…

Back to this record, which has very few weak points. “Buried Alive” is a heartbreaking tale of a mining disaster, and “Worker’s Song” always pulls at my blue collar roots, as it reminds us of the many (often anonymous) sacrifices the working class has made over the centuries.

Worker’s Song” is originally a folk song by Ed Pickford, rocked up by the Murphys as only they can do. They give similar treatments to the traditional “Black Velvet Band” and a seventies folk song by Pete St. John called “Fields of Athenry.” This latter song is about a man imprisoned for stealing food during the Irish famine. It is heartbreaking and in the hands of the Murphys more than a little angry as well. It is very hard to enjoy the Pete St. John original once you’ve heard the Murphys fill it with electric guitar, glorious unison singing and (of course) bagpipes.

The Dirty Glass” is a great duet between a drunk and (I think) his bar which owes a lot to the Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York” but still manages to be fresh and new. Like “Fairytale…” it is a song that is good fun on the surface, and tragic underneath.

The final song on the album is the hilarious (and not at all tragic) “Kiss Me, I’m Shitfaced,” a song about all the dumb things you’ll say and do while trying to impress a girl after having one too many pints. Lines like this:

“I can bench-press a car, I’m an ex-football star
With degrees from both Harvard and Yale
Girls just can’t keep up, I’m a real love machine
I’ve had far better sex while in jail”

Aren’t likely to get you laid, but damn they’re funny.
Even more important, this album features the song “Time To Go” which is about my favourite hockey team, the Boston Bruins! With a chorus of “Go go, black and gold!” it is hard not to fall hard for this record honouring the greatest hockey franchise of all time (yeah, you read that right – get your own blog if you disagree).

The boys pay homage in the song to the subway line you take to get to the stadium and also to the Bruins’ long time anthem singer, Rene Rancourt. It is all around good fun, at least for me. This song used to play on my EA Sports video game and I loved hearing it as the Bruins won the virtual cup. When we won the real one in 2011, I played it again. For that alone, this album will always be #1.


Best tracks:  Worker’s Song, The Outcast, World Full of Hate, Buried Alive, The Dirty Glass, Fields of Athenry, Bastards on Parade, As One, Time To Go, Kiss Me I’m Shitfaced

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