"Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason." --Albert Camus
The irony of using this quote as a prelude to a review of Dropkick Murphy's The Meanest of Times is, I hope, apparent. The quote itself is more analysis than The Meanest of Times can bear.
Sometimes you just need to listen. A lemon is yellow; now squeeze it and move on.
Which brings me—and it's about time—to the band itself, a group that surely needs no analysis. Here are the important facts: they're Irish, South Boston Irish, Irish Catholic, and they play hardcore, shatter-your-vocal-cords punk rock music. [Note: I'm not really sure I know what punk rock means, and mostly don't like it, but the band is referred to as a punk band so I'm sticking with it.] And while you may need to take them in small doses, because their kind of intensity can fray your nerves, you need to hear them nonetheless, especially their most recent disc, The Meanest of Times, certainly one of the most aptly titled discs I've ever heard.
"Famous for Nothing," the opening track, begins as if in the middle of a bar fight. Let's not waste time here, gentlemen; let's get to it. It smacks you in the face, your brain takes a sledgehammer straight on, and off you go. Al Barr, on lead vocals, sings like he just put a blow torch to his vocal cords. In this opening piece, he's both barrels in: "It was us against the world/Famous for nothing/Yeah, nothing was our world." And near the end: "The good Lord was calling me/But I wasn't us/From the convent to the rectory/And over in the sacristy/I'm a goddamn travesty/And that's just my luck."
Well, maybe there is room for analysis here. Whatever their sonic explosions and scalded esophageal rants, they are addressing issues of sorrow and loss and hurt.
No doubt this opening tune sets the tone for The Meanest of Times: friends come and go, they die, we lose our innocence and try without success to scrap our way back to a hopefulness that's just beyond us; death lurks around every corner and behind every raucous bar in the neighborhood, and we can't do a goddamn thing about it but shout out that we at least have knowledge of it. Knowing counts for something.
In "God Willing," the Murphys, of course, don't truck with subtlety: "Whether living without hope/Or at the end of the rope/It isn't written in stone/When the future's unknown/And though some do atone/Through no fault of their own/They fall through the cracks/And get left by the wayside." It's a hostile world we live in, and a particularly ravenous hostility consumes South Boston.
And from "Vices and Virtues," there's this: "Whisky, war, suicide and guns…The next one took his life/They said there was never any hope/He was shocked and institutionalized/Found hanging from a rope."
It's a hardscrabble, violent life growing up poor and alcohol-sodden in South Boston, and Dropkick Murphys have survived, with a few personnel changes here and there, to sing about it, or scream at it. This is a no-punches pulled record. Sadness and tragedy preside over this little part of god's earth, and that's just the way it is.
Now, you can decide to make all this tragedy a lullaby, but that'd be a different band and a different sound. The Murphys confront all this madness with an energy that has some fight behind it: yeah, life's a bitch, but let's not swoon over it. Let's take a baseball bat and beat the immortal shit out of self-awareness.
But a good way to finish this off—we're all fated anyway—is to look to family; the very thing that gets torn apart in this rough and brutal world is the very thing, the only thing, that matters. The final track, "Never Forget," puts an end to it all: "To all the single parents/Who keep holding down the fort/To all you sons & daughters/Be thankful for what you've go/To everyone with no one/May good fortune turn your way/To everyone who's had someone/Remember them today."
The Meanest of Times is an aggressive, uncompromising work. You're not likely to forget it, in doses small or large.
