Young Dubliners - Saints and Sinners
by Dan MacIntosh
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My local PBS station was showing some Celtic music show again the other night, and I was nearly bored to tears. Yes, tradition is a treasure. But if I'm not given relatable songs to, well, relate to, this show could have featured the Boston Celtics' mascot drunkenly singing some dopey song at half court for all I cared. Young Dubliners may contain transplanted (to Los Angeles) Irishmen in its personnel mix, and there might be plenty of Irish musical elements filling out there original songs. But they're songs, and fine songs at that, people! So why aren't these boys all over my public television airwaves?
There are at least a few truly memorable songs on this altogether solid CD. The acoustic ballad "In the End" is one of them. It's the sort of anti-war song that doesn't do a whole lot of finger-pointing. Instead, it asks the valid question: Where do we go from here? It begins, "For all of our wars/What have we won?" Are you listening, Mr. Bush?
The Irish rave-up, "Rosie", is so good it's darn near Pogues good. Over a driving beat and nervous fiddling, we learn that perhaps this object of desire is too rich for the singer's blood. "Rosie sweet Rosie/Money don't grow on trees/If I thought for just one sec it did/I'd be down on my bended knee." Its chorus is also sung by what sounds like a gang of rowdy boys. Perfect!
Elsewhere, it's hard not to love any song that begins with the words, "Straight ahead keep your piehole closed," as does "Backseatdriver". Like "Rosie", this one is another Irish rocker, for lack of a better term. It includes propulsive bass and chunky electric guitar, but also more than enough Irish fiddling to keep it nationalistically honest.
The Irish have a reputation, and possibly a valid one, for getting drunk and disorderly. Both "Rosie" and "Backseatdriver" reflect that pub-fueled side. But they also know how to make you sad enough to cry through song, which nearly happened to me during "(I Don't Think I'll) Love Anymore". This breakup song includes heartbreaking words like: "So I'm wishing you well/Though it hurts you can tell." Indeed, this one hurts – lots.
The CD's title track suggests that some sort of spiritual melting pot is what this world severely needs in order to heal itself. "Then worlds collide/All the colors bleed into one/It's only then we're having fun"
Saints and Sinners closes with one that is hardly Irish sounding at all. Over a coolly clipped bass line, "Chance" is a cry for help that borders on hopelessness. "I am undone/I can't out run/This wicked pollution."
I imagine Young Dubliners get plenty of gig offers every St. Patrick's Day. But I also hope they get seen and heard most every other day of the year too because Saints and Sinners is a powerful collection of songs, which just happens to have plenty of lovely Irish flavorings. If you have the luck of the Irish, you'll get the chance to experience these tunes in a sweaty club.
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