Having once sung with Fastway (the band formed by former Motorhead guitarist ‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke and UFO bassist Pete Way), FLOGGING MOLLY’S Dave King has been around the block a good few times and probably seen plenty that would make most folks' hair curl.
However, while this native Dubliner may live the expat life in LA these days, he’s clearly more than au fait with the horrific effects of the recession gripping both the Emerald Isle and his adopted homeland. Flogging Molly’s sixth album ‘Speed of Darkness’ – recorded in Detroit, the heartland of American economic misery – is an album steeped in financial meltdown and the social effects thereof. It’s a record that NEEDED to be made and to say it strikes a chord right now is something of an understatement.
Trailer single ‘Don’t Shut ‘em Down’ gives you some idea what to expect. A growling, grizzled’ n’ proud power anthem, it pulls few punches about the economic tumult on either side of the Atlantic (“too many faults, no reasons/ the rains that fall dry bleeding upon the ashes of our homes/ Our homes...save our homes!”) and it supplies a suitably crunching chorus to ram its’ point home.
The band’s boisterous, fiddle and accordion-fuelled Folk-Punk sound is every bit as wired, yet considerably less boorish than fellow Celtic Punksters The Mahones and Blood & Whiskey and it’s the perfect vehicle to let out the throttle on Clash-ified fist-punchers like ‘Saints & Sinners’, ‘Speed of Darkness’ and the superb ‘Revolution.’ This latter is an obvious stand-out, although its catchy, anthemic qualities only partially sugar the bitter pill of the dead-on lyrics (“is this the way it’s meant to be when I signed up for the American dream/ now I sign to the welfare state/ the money in the bank? Well it’s history.”)
Crucially, though, Flogging Molly are about much more than merely rampant hoolies. They also have the skill to seduce when they adopt a lighter Folk-Pop tone akin to The Waterboys on tracks like ‘The Present State of Grace’ or ‘The Heart of the Sea’, while elegant exile ballads are rarely more beautifully realised than the elegiac ‘Cradle of Humankind’ with its tumbling piano and sweeping fiddle from Bridget Regan.
|
While the album is mired in the effects of devastating times on honest folk, its’ belief in the best of mankind is unshakeable and nowhere is this more apparent than during the record’s magnificent final stretch. Perhaps the record’s most personal song, the gorgeous hard-knocks love song ‘A Prayer for Me in Silence’ has Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl written all over it and its plea to "never let us fall apart” will live long after the economic tide has finally turned. Finally, there’s ‘Rise’: the album’s call to arms with a historic nod to Pete Seeger on the stirring “we shall overcome someday” refrain. Its’ defiance is palpable and much needed while most of us wonder how we came to let the bankers strip us bare.
In a society where apathy has ruled for too long, it’s going to take a lot more than one record to jolt the wider populace into action, but ‘Speed of Darkness’ is a bloody good start. Urgency and injustice is etched into its twelve songs like seaside towns in sticks of rock and it demonstrates that fury can still have the hour. Anger can be power? Let’s hope we can still listen and use it accordingly.
Flogging Molly online
|
