Rocking The Boat

Filling my abode with the sound of bagpipes this week is the most recent album from the Dropkick Murphys, which I've just got round to buying. I've long been a fan of these fellas and their ability to blend an old-fashioned Oi sound with Irish folk (the band themselves refer to the end product as Celtic punk), and their best work merits way more consideration than it's afforded by the music press, who tend to dismiss them as Plastic Paddies peddling a heavily-diluted pastiche of Eighties street-punk. Yes, there have always been the crowd-pleasing tearaway renditions of traditional songs from the Emerald Isle, but on the best DKMs albums they've nestled alongside intelligent anthems about working class Irish-American life, union protest songs and anti-war broadsides. 2007's The Meanest Of Times - arguably the band's best album to date - gave us lyrically mature tales of a self-destructive mother losing custody of her children in The State Of Massachusetts, juvenile delinquency in Famous For Nothing and the need for improved workers' rights in Tomorrow's Industry, while 2011's Going Out In Style - a hit and miss concept album about the life and death of an Irish immigrant - featured the brilliantly rousing pro-union stomper Take 'Em Down.

That impressive pedigree has, unfortunately, contributed to my feeling of disappointment at this latest DKMs offering. It sounds like a band going through the motions, delivering the minimum expected of them and no more. The incisive lyrics of previous albums seem to have given way to by-the-numbers tales of love and heavy drinking, along with a slightly ill-advised Christmas song (Fairytale Of New York it ain't). The album's not without its charms, and I'm sure plenty of the songs will grow on me given chance, but I can't shake off that frustration - which raised its head for me last week with the new Billy Bragg album - when artists with Something To Say decide to play it safe rather than rocking the boat.