aaamusic | On 22, Jan 2011

Get your drinking hats on and dig out the battered old fiddle, we’re going out to punk it up, international gypsy style. The Dreadnoughts are, with their second album, taking us kicking and screaming on a gleeful tour of Europe and Ireland, a tour clad in beer-soaked leathers and debauched punk attitude.

Imagine The Pogues collaborating with Gogol Bordello, and you’re partway there. ‘Cider Road’ is our roadtrip’s outset, where we are concussed by our dirty street-punks and stolen away. The beat refuses to drop below a manic sprint, with chugging guitars giving way to a two-part violin dance solo that you wish you knew how to jig to, as well as pogo jumping choruses and barking punk rock vocals.

Tongue-in-cheek ‘Polka Never Dies’ is a louche celebration of shambolic musical skill, blending three-chord enthusiasm with the fiery passion of folk fiddle at its finest. Inviting all the world-music-baiting hipsters into the boozy heart of The Dreadnoughts’ mad world, with melodies this infectious it is hard to refuse. Not to mention the unhinged sense of humour evident in many of their tracks. ‘Goblin Humpaa’ as a title track, anyone? Yet this is a clashing, anarchic instrumental with truly blistering violin playing and manic piano-mashing.

Where The Dreadnoughts excel is in the art of the urban sea shanty. The jaunty hop-skip ‘Gintleman’s Club’ rushes by at a million miles an hour and yet sounds like the soundtrack to some unhinged pirate b-movie of the finest kind. Ditto with the vocals-only drinking song ‘Randy Dandy-Oh’, as the band’s collective vocal power doesn’t just bring us a fantastic Irish-pirate-tinged drinking song, but clouts us round the head with it. As for ‘West Country Man’, it is a raucous, obscene drinking song that inebriates its listeners by sheer force of intent.

‘Poutine’ is narrative folk punk the way it should be: no confessional wittering, but instead the blood-and-thunder rawness of campfire celebrations mixed with snotty punk attitude. The savagely barked gang vocals and whirling dance reels grab the listener and get them to join the sweaty dance. ‘Turbo Island’ brings back the pirate theme with a fury in the accordion and sea shanty gang vocals, as well as tales of sea battles and far-off islands of drink and sin. Follow-up ‘Black Sea Gale’ blends jangled strings, tremolo fury and sea shanty power with punky drumming and indeed an old-school street punk us-against-the-world attitude.

And out of brief quietness, the laconic, woozy ¾ of ‘Claudia’s Waltz’ gives us a chance to finally fall into a seat and take a much-needed sip of that drink we acquired but never got a chance to sample as a thudding rhythm drives out the rock that electrifies a bluesy waltz. Contrast this with the snarling fevered rock-out of ‘Paulina’, a red-blooded lust song of epic proportions that brings back the lightspeed percussion to battle it out with folk’s melodic insanity.

To close, the droning gypsy folk of ‘Za Smierc Przyjaciela’, a slightly out of place yet well-played song that is equal parts seduction, narrative and lullaby in its lush rawness and passion that caresses the listener like a sordid yet contented morning after.

If it ever crossed your mind that polka is dead, suffice to say The Dreadnoughts have proven otherwise without a shadow of a doubt, as this excellent 35 minutes of chaos sparks with enviable vitality and a single-minded lust for life, ladies and liquor. If you love shambolic underground street punk, buy this album. If you like gypsy folk or Celtic fiddle played with all the passion and fire it deserves, buy this album. If you want a good time, buy this album. There is no reason you could dislike it, or even sit on the fence about it, when what is on offer is this much fun.

Author: Katie H-Halinski