If you’re looking for some Irish punk to get you down the long, straight road, or if you just want to piss-off your campground neighbors—as in, no sleep for anyone tonight!—Flogging Molly’s Swagger is a great buy. This collection of 13 licks offers some traditional Irish ballads, but in the end it’s nothing more than a jammin’ ride moving at Mach III. A warning, from personal experience, of course: listening to this band puts you in the mood to swill about 10 Guinness stouts and maybe a shot or two of Bushmills. While listening to this band you can almost smell the next morning; the stale beer on a worn wooden floor and crushed fags in Dublin, inhaled, of course, as you ask around for that lost wallet or what’s left of your head from the night before. “Got pissed and lost your wallet, eh.” And it’s no different on the banks of the Madison or the South Fork Boise or Grande Ronde with the music blaring out your truck’s doors. You sit around a campfire long enough listening to Flogging Molly and you’ll discover how fast a bottle of the brown juice disappears. And then it’s morning and you have trouble tying on a skunk and, “Hey,” you might ask. “Why does my head hurt so bad? Oh yea, the music and the whiskey,” you remind yourself. And you thought you said you learned your lesson last time. What really grabs me about this cd are the lyrics.
If you love to laugh and cry and you admire doom or sin, consider these lines. If you’re not going to climb aboard the ship, the least you could do is give Flogging Molly a play: From Black Friday Rule I want to believe in a freedom that’s bold But all I remember is the freedom of old Well I lost me a wife, so I found me a plane Flew all the way to California This mess in my head is a mess getting out You drink too much coffee, I drink too much stout From Devil’s Dance Floor Pressed against her face I could feel her insecurity Her mother’d been a drunk And her father was obscurity But nothin’ ever came From a life that was a simple one So pull yourself together girl And have a little fun Swagger is available at www.floggingmolly.com