Dropkick Murphys - 11 Short Stories of Pain & Glory: Album Review

The Dropkick Murphys make an O.K. album.
And that's O.K.
O.K.?


The thing about celtic punk is that it ends up being pretty one note the more you listen to it. Don't get me wrong, punk music in general can get pretty repetitive, but with the right sound and the right energy, anything can become enjoyable even if you've heard it before.

Then there are times like Dropkick Murhpys and 11 Short Stories of Pain & Glory when the gimmick of "we're just a couple of nice guys from Boston" wears off fast, no matter how good the album's intentions are. The intentions being that this is supposedly some of DM's most personal and heartwarming material as it's greatly inspired by the band's charity, The Claddagh Fund. So what you have is songs focusing on addiction, the homeless, and of course, the tragic Boston Bombing.

And to that extent Short Stories actually puts up a hell of a fight. "Rebels With A Cause" paints a pretty harsh story of abandoned children, but only has basic, uninspired punk rock chords to show off. Most of the lyrics on "4-15-13" are some of the most heartwarming words the band has ever put to song.

All that stuff is great, it's just the music around it that makes the album just end up sounding bland. There isn't any speed or energy or excitement to any of the tracks, and it's easy to say "Eric, this is just a sad, slow album" and I would believe that, but then there are tracks like "Sandlot" that are a bit on the melancholy side (it's a track about reminiscing about your youth) that builds and grows into this loud chant and you can tell that DM wants you to get excited and shout along with them, but you just don't want to. The guitars aren't loud enough (I had to crank the volume on my headphones just to hear them) the hooks aren't catchy enough, Al Barr's voice sounds like a first take before his first cup of coffee, nothing about the production makes me want to get up and shout the way the band wants me to. And unfortunately, that also seems to be a big part of DM's bag of tricks, with "First Class Looser" sounding almost identical to "Sandlot". And as for the cover of "You'll Never Walk Alone", again, it's not bad, but Barr's Irish wail adds pretty much nothing that the other 500 versions of this song didn't hit at some point.

The only track that really comes close to hitting that effect is "I Had A Hat", which finally sees Barr waking up and the rest of the band going above 4 BPM, with some infectious bass as well. It's a shining moment in a largely dry album. Then there's "Kicked To The Curb" which seems to take itself less seriously with some goofier lyrics about loosing your girlfriend as the other members of the band chime in with what amounts to "oh shit, that's a bummer dude". And if there is one track where all the slow, melancholy, "we're all Irish on the inside" attitude does end up working, it's the track dedicated to the Boston Bombing victims "4-15-13", with a nice marching beat, and lyrics that don't exactly cut you with a knife, but leaves you with this really warm feeling of  "we are all just people, maybe everything will get better".

11 Short Stories of Pain & Glory tries somewhat to invoke some grand feeling of hardship and loss but only exceeds in producing a handful of mediocre tracks that just couldn't get the job done.

5/10