Dropkick Murphys: Blackout

Dropkick Murphys: Blackout

2003

Hellcat Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Walk Away  2. Worker's Song  3. The Outcast  4. Black Velvet Band  5. Gonna Be a Blackout Tonight  6. World Full of Hate  7. Buried Alive  8. The Dirty Glass  9. Fields of Athenry  10. Bastards on Parade  11. As One  12. This Is Your Life  13. Time to Go  14. Kiss Me I'm Shitfaced


The Dropkick Murphys put out an album called, "Sing Loud, Sing Proud!" in 2001, but I was still feeling burned by "The Gang's All Here" so I skipped it...

Then one day when I was listening to the radio, in between the latest (s)hit by Alien Ant Farm, I heard a very enjoyable song called "Walk Away"...

...The song was good enough for me to give the poor ol' Dropkicks another chance...I found a vinyl copy for a super reasonable price at PDQ Records (new vinyl at reasonable prices? Those were the days!) and picked it up...

(I was wondering if PDQ was still around or not...When I first moved to Tucson in 2001, it was a pretty great place, but then it seemed to hit the skids...Different owners re-opened it and it was the most-picked over, over-priced place I'd ever seen (Look! 5000 copies of "Hotel California"! Billy Joel's "Glass Houses"! Eight bucks? Why not!?!?!)...Then I heard it had finally closed down...But then last time I went to Tucson, it kinda looked like it was open again...Nobody was there, but it looked like it might still be functional...Just a minute ago, I decided to finally look it up and found a Tucson Weekly article from December 2014 (where I swiped the above photo...Robble! Robble!) saying it was reopened by the original owners...Hrmmm...Might have to check it out again next time I'm in Tuck-son...)

Anyway, I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed this "Blackout" album...There's no overarching concept (unless you count their usual "hard-working man" stance as a gimmick) and although Al still isn't the most exciting or charismatic vocalist in the world, he sounds fine here...He's no longer trying to fill Mike's cartoon-y shoes...He just uses his everyman voice in an everyman manner and the album comes across as a bit more blue collar hard rock than skin-head oi punk...Only "World Full of Hate" is turd-flushingly unbearable (An acoustic ballad?! Sung by Al Barr?!?!??!!!), which is a huge improvement from "The Gang's All Here"...

Oh, and the Celtic influence is back...Wisely, Ken is given the lead vocal spot on most of Irish tracks and boy, are they good...Their majestic take on "Fields of Athenry" is quite an impressive production...A muted intro that erupts into a massed army of vocals, towering guitars, a skyful of bagpipes...I'd say this makes my shortlist of favorite DKM songs...They're so good at this sort of thing it's ridiculous...

]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] (our cat Iggy just sat on the keyboard...I think he's been toying with the idea of blogging for awhile now...I kinda like how it looks...He brings up an interesing point when he says, "]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]")

All around pretty solid stuff...Outside of the tracks I mentioned above, there's nothing too Earth-shattering, but it all rocks sufficiently and I like this ten times more than "The Gang's All Here"...I think they were heading in the right direction again...I think all they really needed to do at this point to be great again was to rough things up a bit...It feels a little clean, especially with all the acoustic and traditional stuff on here but I think the band's spirit pulls it through...Fun stuff but I personally think they got even better after this...

Here's the "Fields of Athenry" by Dropkick Murphys...Enjoy...
 

7/8/8/8/8/8/8/8/8/-0