All posts by Mustard Finnegan

Review

The Mahones: Angels and Devils

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September 20, 2012

I Just spent about 24 hours with ANGELS AND DEVILS the new album from THE MAHONES. On a first listen it’s obvious that the album continues on in the hard edged Celtic Punk direction of The Black Irish though the sound on ANGELS AND DEVILS is just huge; a reflection of time and money spent in Montreal’s best studio. The other thing I immediately noticed is the big dirty guitars with my mind immediately jumping to The Replacements and Husker Du.

The easiest way for me to do a review is a track-by-track summary, so here yah go………

Shakespeare Road – A big sounding autobiographical Celtic punk epic about Finny’s time living in a London squat and playing in a punk band back in the 80’s with his infamous cousin Rory. While the screen doors ain’t flapping in the wind on Shakespeare Road they would be if the doors hadn’t been kicked in and the windows smashed.

Angel and Devils, the title track (obviously) is an in your face Celtic punk rocker with some familiar Mahones melodies; a tribute to the scene.

Spanish Lady, a hyper kinetic cover of the Irish standard. Finny’s growling voices duels with the Murphy’s helium sucking Ken Casey. I believe this is the 1st time Ken has guested on anyone elses album.

Medley : Cruel Of Turf / The Pigeon On The Gate / The Battle Of Aughrim – a Celtic punk instrumental that sounds like The Chieftains broke into the Brixton squat on Shakespeare Road, sniffed some glue and started playing – maniac.

Angel Without Wings / Merry Christmas Baby – A big sounding ballad sort of Fairy tale Of New York meets Girl With Galway Eyes/Little Bit Of Love. Great track but not sure if it works in the album’s running order.

The Waiting picks up the pace again. A strong sing along with a SLF feel which maybe is because SLFs Jake Burns guests on guitars.

The King Of Copenhagen, now we’re sucking diesel and The Mahones are ripping up a storm up and down the Autobahns.

Past The Pint Of Now Return is fast, punkie and fokie with The Mahones re-live the high jinks – scratch that – drunk debauchery of their recent German tour and at the mention of the Dropkick Murphys a voice familiar from Spanish Lady jumps in to honor the ghost of Brendan Bean.

Medley : The Connaught Man’s Rambles / Christmas Eve Reels / Johnny’s On Fire – the fecking Chieftains ain’t moving and its 4 in the morning and they have polished off the Carlsberg Special Brew and Poitín- feckin’maniac!

Whiskey Train, a Mahones album would not be complete without a song with Whiskey in the title. This time it’s a Whiskey train they are riding it Johnny Cash on Paddy Whiskey style through Belfast – No Bushmills here, Finny is a good Catholic bhoy and wouldn’t touch any of that heathen filth.

The Revolution Starts Now, takes up the political cudgel of Blood Is On Your Hands, my favorite track on Black Irish, and starts pounding again.

Makes No Sense At All slows down the pace, just a touch and is reminiscent of the Here Comes Lucky period Mahones meets Husker Du……..just informed it is actually a Husker Du cover from 1985’s Flip Your Wig.

The album finishes with a bonus track, Tin Soldiers, a fantastic Stiff Little Fingers cover

20 plus years in the game and The Mahones sill got it, they manage to keep thing fresh yet keep the old fans happy. Is Angel and Devils the Mahones finest album? Hard to answer, that’s kind of like asking a parent who their favorite child is but let’s say this child is getting a shiny new bike this Christmas.

Review

Circle J: Diggers

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July 21, 2012

Digger’s is the new 5 track EP from one of my favorite bands of the last few years – Circle J from the Netherlands. If you haven’t had the pleasure then these lads can be best described as holding the musical middle ground somewhere between (old) Flogging Molly and Norway’s Greenland Whalefishers and they hold that ground very, very well. No surprises, no frills just straight ahead rowdy Celtic’punk’n’roll and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Highlight (amongst many)? The Legend of Robert Morgan.

http://www.circlej.nl

Review

Materdea: Satyricon

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May 11, 2012

Here’s something outta left field – Celtic-progressive-rock from Italy. SATYRICON is Materdea’s second album and its chocker-block full of big contemporary metal riffs and fancy drumming along with operatic female vocals and strong vocal harmonies overlaid with Celtic and medieval teamed lyrics and melodies. The best point of reference I can give is a sound somewhere between Celtic rock originators Horslips and the symphonic metal band Nightwish (we at least their cover of Gary Moore’s OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY- I’m not familiar with the rest of Nightwish’s stuff)

Review

Greenland Whalefishers: Live At Farmer Phil’s Festival

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May 16, 2012

Norway’s Greenland Whalefishers are one of Celtic-punks longest running and consistently great bands and while they are very much routed in the sounds of The Pogues (right down to Arvid’s out MacGowning MacGowan’s vocals) though with a nod to both ’77 and current punk influences.

Live At Farmer Phil’s Festival is a no frills, in the raw recording of the GWFs set at the quirky Farmer Phil’s Festival in the UK and it really capture the power of the GWFs live set that has bashed heads from Poland to California and Japan and is now bashing heads on vinyl. The vinyl package is classy, high quality, blue wax including tons of photos on the inner sleeve – buy it before its gone, it will be a collectors item shortly.

1. 4 Season Song
2. Hit the Ground
3. Waiting
4. I Just Saw You
5. I Am Roving
6. July Morning
7. Rich Holder At Thorp Arch
8. Backup Man
9. Limp Jos Story
10. Loboville
11. The Wild Rover

Review

Lexington Field: Poor Troubled Life

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May 21, 2012

Poor Troubled Life is the quick follow-up to last years “most excellent” ((c) Bill and Ted) debut full length release, OLD DIRT ROAD, and we continue down the old dirt road here on this EP – of course the Old Dirty is part boreen, part Route 66 and part moonshine trail. Not a bad track in sight but special shout out is given to the shout it out, Flogging Molly-ish, SELFISH BASTARD, the Irish traditional, GALWAY BAY, given the ol’ Celtic punk treatment and the Americana of the title track Poor Troubled Life, a song with really cross over potential.

Review

Nick Burbridge & Tim Cotterell: Gathered

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July 5, 2012

Nick Burbridge is a someone whos work I’m very familiar with through both his main gig – McDermotts 2 Hours and his poetic writing. Tim Cotterell’s work I know as both a producer and as fiddler for Glasgow’s The Electrics. Both are very fine musician’s so I’ve been very excited to get to hear this collaboration.

First off, the cover artwork of Gathered sets the tone of the collaboration – a black and white photo of what looks like a dog hanging dead in the forest. Very Blair Witch Project. In fact if I didn’t recognize the names on the sleeve I’d have assumed it was a misdirected Norwegian black metal album. Fortunately, the 12 tracks within have nothing to do with skinny Scandinavians with scary face pant – Its more bleak then that – Burbridge writes songs and stories about real people and real life – failure, resignation and defeat and that’s a lot more fearsum then cartoon horror. The music is equally stark and bleak with acoustic guitar, fiddle and Burbridge’s rich vocals all immaculately crafted together into song smith perfect. Gathered is not an immediate album by any stretch but if you work at it, it will be very rewarding and something that will stick around for a long time.

Review

The Radiators From Space: Sound City Beat

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July 14, 2012

Sound City Beat has been a project that I’ve been very familiar with over the past year plus. I had met the Radiator’s Philip Chevron in March of last year when he was in Boston gigging with his other band to discuss Shite’n’Onions doing the US release of the Rad’s 3rd album – TROUBLE PILGRIM. He had given me a heads up on what the Rad’s were already planning for their 4th album – a collection of covers of Irish rock/beat groups for the mid 60’s to early 70s ranging from tracks from the legendary (Van Morrison’s Them, Thin Lizzy and Rory Gallagher’s Taste) to the long, long forgotten (Sugar Shack, Blue Ace’s, The Creatures) – the primordial soup era of Irish rock if you will.

Now, while it would be pretty easy for a band as good as the Radiators to knock out the 18 tracks here on SCB and call it a tribute or a history lesson but not so as the boys have obviously spent a tremendous amount of time on picking the right track from each band covered as opposed to picking the bleeding obvious, so that each song on the album flows effortlessly into the next and almost to the point where the listener could be convinced into believing that SCB is an album of originals. How does it sound? While the songs are true to the origins, whether beat/garage/ psychedelic/folk rock or even pure pop but dragged through ’77 for the attitude and snarl and reborn into the 21s century yet still as fresh as it was ’67.

Sound City Beat is out on the legendary Chiswick Records and the Radiators are joined by Henry McCullough (the only Irish man to play Woodstock and who was Paul McCartney’s guitar man for years) who add licks on the version of Eire Apparent’s – Yes, I Need Someone – Henry was Eire Apperent’s guitar player but unfortunately got booted from the band prior to their debut album being recorded with Jimi Hendrix twiddling the knobs – so a nice opportunity to complete some unfinished business for Henry. Also joining the Rad’s is Terry Woods, Philips mate from his other long time gig and Eamon Carr drummer from Horslips who does the spoken word portion of Thin Lizzy”s Dublin….which makes a decent lead into The Lady Wrestler, the long lost, should have been Horslips debut single but was never released that spiritually closes the albums – my involvement with the Radiators came about trying to compile a Horslips tribute (which is still ongoing) and the offer of the band to cover The Lady Wrestler. While never really a beat group it seems to fit the album and symbolically close out the era in the same way the Johnny’s Wedding, Horslips debut single was the beging of the new era of Irsh rock….and rest is history

Not a Pogues album, not a punk album but something that anyone interest in Rock music from Ireland (or just an interest in perfectly performed though uncompromising rock’n’roll) should own.

Review

Smokey Bastard: Tales From The Wasteland

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May 1, 2012

Smokey Bastard are a frantic, banjo centric, folk-punk outfit outta London with their second album, TALES FROM THE WASTELAND, a strong follow-up to their strong debut, CRASHING THROUGH FLOORS. To my ears Smokey Bastard occupy the middle ground somewhere between The Pogues and Dropkick Murphys with a nod of the head towards Springsteen and his Seeger Sessions Band- Mrs McGRATH/My SON JOHN get’s a good kicking here, and ASPIRATIONS, I HAVE SOME name checks Springsteen himself. My guilty pleasure though? MAMMA MIA the old ABBA chestnut, Celtic-punk hasn’t been so much fun since Mr. Irish Bastard went Living La Viva Loco.

Review

Jamie Clarke’s Perfect: Beatboys

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April 25, 2012

I’m guessing this is the 5th release by Jamie Clarke’s Perfect that we’ve reviewed here at Castle S’n’O, so you all know the story of Jamie and his membership of The Pogues, replacing the might Philip Chevron and playing on and writing material for the final Pogues studio album, 1986’s, POGUE MAHONE. All the prior Perfect releases have been consistently strong – mixing folk, polka and other Cental and Eastern Eurpean souunds with Irish, punk and Pogues. BEATBOYS, I’d argue is Perfects best release to date, a bigger band, a bigger sound – Punk’n’Irish meets Rock-a-billy and strong Tutonic influence (Jamie is based in German) Highlights include, a great version of THE SUN THE MOON from POGUE MAHONE and Johnny / June Carter Cash inspired JACKSON and folk-a-billyBEATBOYS and pretty much everything on the album.

Review

Black Friday: Live At The Brewery

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March 31, 2012

Black Friday are a Pogues-ish, Clash-ish, Maritime Celtic punk outfit from the south west of England – that’s Cornwall for all those that don’t own a map. LIVE AT THE BREWERY is Black Fridays second full length album and their 2nd live album if memory servers me correctly, though this new album is almost evenly split between originals, trad standards and a couple of contemporary standards – GUNS OF BRIXTON and BLACK FRIDAY RULE as opposed to their debut that was all standards except the masterful original GOT TO GO which reappears here in all its glory. If LIVE AT THE BREWERY is anything to go by then Black Friday are a very fine live band though we still await the studio debut to make it all official.