They’re a rum-looking bunch, these Rumjacks: five guys, burly, beardy and bristling with tattoos, they have lived-in faces. Hailing from Sydney but drawing on Irish and Scottish music, their music infuses Celtic traditions – jaunty rabble-rousing knees-up tunes with pipes and whistles, banjos and fiddles – with punk guitars and snarling socio-political fury.
Being no-messin’ Aussies, they’re the voice of the working man and they tell it like it is: ‘sixteen straight shifts, bust a gut for bugger all / ‘Til the gaffer hits the bell & spits me outta hell’ they growl on ‘Wknd (Flash New Breeks)’. It’s relatable to the everyman.
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Just as they work hard, they play hard, and there are no shortage of rowdy drinking songs here (‘A Fistful o’ Roses’, ‘“Eight Beers” McGee’). I have to confess that folk-punk is a genre a really do find grates, but ‘Sleepin’ Rough’ is big on roustabout bluster, big on boozy, brawling stomping choruses, and big on energy.
The Rumjacks Online
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