Ignorance of This 'Law' Is No Excuse

Half the Bottle Down,
by Shilelagh Law

One of the things I really love about Irish folk is the sense of tradition it fosters.

Wait, stay with me here.

This isn't going to be yet another yawn of a sound bite waxing nostalgic about some crusty fiddler from Kilfenora teaching "The Mason's Apron" to a new generation of narrowback wastrels. What I mean is the idea that the music is built with so much texture, of so much substance, that it seems any artist or artistic generation can work it into a meaningful shape and lovingly carry it forward without doing any real harm to the source material.

Compare Paul Brady's and Bob Dylan's respective versions of "Arthur McBride," or even the wail of some bollox singing "Nancy Spain" at open mike night vs. Christy Moore's original. Now queue up Half the Bottle Down by Shilelagh Law, and listen to the way these guys serve up backing vocals on songs like "Mountain Dew" and tell me it doesn't sound like Run-DMC in a righteous throwdown with the Clancy Brothers.

Yet there's no mistaking the respect for the material that these guys feel; 15 years ago (wow, was it that long?) we felt the same thing listening to the Pogues' Red Roses for Me. Like the Pogues, the guys in Shilelagh Law are not method actors; this is the legitimate voice of urban postmodern Irish folk. (Take that, Eileen Ivers.)

On lead vocals is a singer with the unlikely name of Richard Popovic, who I think I'll shortlist for an award I just invented, for American singers of Irish folk music. Such yanks typically fall into one of two equally irritating categories: Let's call them The Lucky Charmers and the Ugly Americans.

The former group seem to think that only Irish people can sing Irish music (which is wrong), and therefore approach the lilt of Irish laughter the way Michael Jackson approaches plastic surgery, and leave you with the queasy feeling that you get from watching Darby O'Gill and the Little People, or hearing Julia Roberts' brogue in Michael Collins.

Ugly Americans don't even consider the possibility that only Irish people should sing Irish music (which, on second thought, might be right), and pronounce words such as "porter" like they're ordering lunch in Canarsie. (Hint: it doesn't rhyme with "border.")

Popovic wins some serious points for navigating deftly between the Irish rock and the American hard place. He sounds fairly comfortable singing about Oranmore without trying to pretend he lives there, and thus becomes a trustworthy liaison between the listener and the material.

And speaking of material, there's tons of good stuff here. The album is a strong combination of trad, can't-miss classics, and Popovic's originals. "Half the Bottle Down," the title track, is by far the best song on the album (although this version suffers from a conflicted feeling—kind of an "earnest spontaneity" in trying to create the live atmosphere that the song deserves).

Other high points include their version of "Big Strong Man," which is hands-down the best I've ever heard, and that includes even the Wolfe Tones' original. "Queen of New York" has a great country groove, and is a worthy successor to the Waterboys' "Fisherman's Blues." It rambles a little, but it's such a pleasant outing that you don't really mind.

Denis McCarthy is a very capable fiddler, and the rest of the band (Terence Brennan on percussion, Stephen Gardner on bass, and Popovic on guitar) supports him with some solid backing. The result is trad that's is as good as anyone else in their class, and better than most.

On the down side, two songs are clearly out of place on the album, "The Men Behind the Wire" and "Come Out, Ye Black and Tans." The need for such incendiary stuff in these delicate times is really questionable, especially since there's such a perfunctory, me-too feeling about the renditions, and it's hard to really get passionate about Irish politics as presented by some guys from the Bronx. I'm sure the songs are a blast at 1AM on McLean Avenue, but the world would have kept spinning just fine without another recorded version of either, and (more importantly) the album would have been a lot more cohesive.

On record, Shilelagh Law sounds like a band that simply can't wait to get out of the confines of a studio and start making some music where it counts, in the middle of a big merry crowd—which if you're lucky will include you. That is to say, you should probably get out and see these guys (like, now), pick up a CD and get it autographed, because one of these days they're going to figure out that they're not just a bar band, and after that there isn't a pub in the boroughs big enough to hold them for long.

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