One Too Many is never enough

The Pubcrawlers give you a reason to celebrate, March 17

March 12, 2008 12:26:04 PM

HAVE ANOTHER: Thank you, sirs and ladies!

This time of year always brings about a bunch of talk about the Irish, but we’ve really been inundated of late, no? From this whole sister-city-with-Bushmills contest to Jonathan Papelbon dancing a jig with the Dropkick Murphys every time you turn on the television to that silly story about the owner of Foley’s refusing to allow “Danny Boy” to be played (seriously, how did that last so long in the national news cycle?), we can’t seem to escape the Irish and their drinking, singing ways lately. Some ethnicities might oppose a reputation as a drinking, carousing, brawling bunch. Not so the Irish.

Just check the new release from the Pubcrawlers, One Too Many Again, yet another delicious blend (that’s a Jameson reference, people) of traditional bagpipe, accordion, fiddle, mandolin, banjo, and tin whistle paired with a ferocious kick drum, thrumming bass, growling electric guitar, and a propensity to play at 150 bpm. You’ve got trainwrecks, shipwrecks, and plain old drunks all over the place, the ’crawlers mixing the morbid with the mundane while never having anything less than a blast.

The opening medley alone is densely packed with historical anecdote. A mash-up of “Itchy Fingers” and “Wreck of the Old ’97” with a delicately picked electric guitar segue, the opening bagpipes stand like a bulwark against digital music’s progress before being shoved aside by heavily distorted guitar chords. Though it’s a traditional Irish reel, it can’t help but recall the Rolling Stones outtakes disc, Itchy Fingers, with those two versions of “Cocksucker Blues,” and the Pubcrawlers do seem to embrace the fuck-all tone that infuses those studio sessions from the late ’60s. Except they have this great feel for nostalgia, evident from the outset on “Wreck,” a train-tragedy tune from the early 20th century. Not only is that tune one of the benchmarks of American music (the first million-selling record; the subject of the first great copyright battle), and the inspiration for the Old 97s (one of the first great alt-country bands to bring Americana back to the mainstream), but it’s such a phenomenal ode to working-class ethic: “When the whistle turned into a scream/Well I found him in the wreck with his hand on the throttle.”

Then they turn the same trick with a pair of originals, marrying “The Loss of the Americus” to “The Friel Jig.” This time it’s a boat that’s gone down, the Americus being a crab boat that sailed out of Anacortes, Washington, on Valentine’s Day 1983, only to be found keel-up in the Bering Sea. Here, the banjo paired with nothing but a kick drum is haunting as hell in the bridge, and the “Friel” finish manages to be jaunty enough to lift your spirits.

This constant pairing of the traditional and the contemporary, the band’s ability to somehow make the ancient seem fresh and immediate, make the album way deeper than just a bunch of rollicking pub tunes.

Both main vocalists, Ron Peddle and Brian Stone, have big growling, hairy pipes. On “Sail the Horn No More,” Peddle is Hagrid on a sailboat, with a tin whistle in the chorus that’s about four octaves higher for the harmony: “We’ll sail the Horn no more/We’ll drink black rum till we drop.” The bridge is a swirling thought-piece, with ripples of cymbal waves washing, the central melody line from the whistle building like a house fire belching smoke for long enough that the anticipation is palpable. Then comes the full-on punk thrash guitar and it’s hard not to jump from your chair (assuming you’re sitting down).

Stone takes the front on one of the album’s better pieces of candy, “The Boys in the Red and the Black,” an ode to the Portland Pirates that should certainly be played before every mid-ice puck drop. After the loss of the Mariners, it seems, hockey fans in Portland quailed: “‘We need heroes,’ came their shouts/and off in the distance, lo and behold, what could it be that we spied/A ship with black sails, strong men on the rails, and pirates who’s say do or die.” If this can’t get people fired up, they better check the carbon monoxide levels in the Civic Center.

Stone and Peddle then pair for “The Pub,” a take on “Loch Lomond,” which is one of those songs you find yourself whistling sometimes without having any idea where it comes from. It’s that “You take the high road ...” song, you know, except with Pubcrawlers it’s in double time, and “I’ll drink a whiskey, you’ll drink a beer/And I’ll be in the bed long before you/And I’ll be on the floor, and you’ll be out the door/And you’ll find me asleep in the morning.”

Yes, this is the kind of album you might find yourself sleeping off. But that’s okay. If you don’t remember what happened, just press Play again.

On the Web
www.the-pubcrawlers.com

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at sam_pfeifle@yahoo.com .