Trouble in the Land
Black 47
Shanachie records
Review by Bill Nevins
Loss and disappointment can sour the heart, but Irish bard Yeats built visionary poetry out of the failure of the 1916 Easter rebellion: a "terrible beauty" was born.
Trouble in the Land, the latest album by New York City's Irish-American rock-reggae-reel rebels Black 47, is also about resurrection from apparent defeat. It could well have been titled "No Surrender!".
Black 47 just never quit. Sneered at by folk purists and battered by the big-time music biz, they have plugged along 10 ten years in bars and festival side-stages. Their savagely loyal fans love them for their chutzpah. Even after they broke into MTV, appeared on Letterman and in Time, Black 47 still closed shows with one fist upraised in defence of the downtrodden — and a foaming pint of stout in the other.
Such defiance has a price. They still do 200 shows a year to survive. While co-leader Chris Byrne may snarl, "Who gives a shit?", even that attitude comes with a cost. Rebels like Brendan Behan, Janis Joplin and Steve Earle have pulled great songs from edgy, defiant lifestyles — but there's always that bleak morning after.
On Trouble in the Land, co-leader/writer Larry Kirwan reflects on that price. Kirwan always fashions dramatic personae for his songs: historical giants like Michael Collins, Paul Robeson or, on this CD, "unmanageable revolutionary" Constance Markievicz. Or he sings the adventures of Paddy the doper and Chuck the rake, and other fictionalised souls wandering the night.
Over successive albums, fans can follow the band's unique real-life close calls — shot at on stage, crawling from a smashed tour van, nearing insanity from the joy of surviving. Trouble in the Land advances these stories in "Those Saints", "Fallin' Off the Edge of America" and "I Got Laid on James Joyce's Grave". And the uileann pipes whirl, the brass blares and the guitars blast over rugged "riddims" to flavour the tales.
Fans won't be disappointed — plenty of roguery and rebellion — but there's also a note of sadness flowing from these new Kirwan songs. No regrets, but a weighing of time spent, blows absorbed, friends and heroes gone for good ("Bobby Kennedy").
While Black 47, like the Irish themselves, once set out to conquer new worlds, the end now seems uncertain. The title cut, "Trouble in the Land", suggests a world spun awry, with guns in the worst of hands and "idiot" neighbours signing up to join the Aryan nation.
Kirwan, Byrne and the other hard lads of Black 47 have not dissolved in tears — they can still jig to a mean ska beat in "Desperate" and "Bodhrans on the Brain". But those tears are not far from eyes gazing at a lonely working woman ("Sharon Falls Apart") or down on a parent's grave ("Tramps Heartbreak").
As Kirwan asserts in "Blood is Thicker Than Water", the lot of us — Black 47, you and me — have met troubles and kept faith, still dancing. Our day will come, and this fine CD helps.
[Bill Nevins is a resident of Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. He writes on Irish politics and cultural topics for a number of progressive publications.]