The new album from the hottest band in celtic-punk at the moment. All the way from Georgia, USA and recorded live in the back room at The Sand Bar on Tybee Island, GA in about seven hours including lunch break!
The last few months have seen the American band In For A Penny making waves right across the celtic-punk/Irish folk music scene and deservedly so. We have featured them a couple of times recently reviewing this year’s EP (here) and the lead single from One More Last Hurrah! (here). Plenty about them clicked with me and the plaudits have rolled in since with praise from the various celtic punk media and a support slot with The Rumjacks on their recent US tour.
(This year’s EP release ‘Every Day Should be Saint Paddy’s Day’)
This is In For A Penny’s second album after 2016’s The Guardian Angel Sessions and all the releases have trod pretty much the same path since. A smattering of Irish standards butting up against self -penned songs. Needless to say I much prefer their own songs. Now there is nothing quite like a song like ‘The Foggy Dew’ to get the blood pumping and the ales flowing but it’s in their own songs that In For A Penny’s talents shine through. It’s been an age old problem for Irish/Celtic-punk bands since the first time someone pulled out a fiddle in a pub and got given a beer for it . Many bands are quite happy to keep singing the standards and let the bookings roll in keeping everyone happy but every musician must have the urge to get some of their own material out there and when it’s as good as In For A Penny’s then I’m afraid it is a necessity!
Sean McNally is the visionary behind In For A Penny. An Irish-American with both the words, the voice and the abilities to take this band far. Amazingly he only began playing the mandolin in 2014 but after only a few open mic performances Sean realised something. The response he was getting to stripped down cover’s of The Dubliners and The Dropkick Murphys on just mando and vocals was so great it seemed the only logical next step was to form a band. Roping in old friends in Henny ‘da butcha’ on drums and Jeremy Riddle on guitar and Sean’s son Bryce on bass In For A Penny have certainly taken their home state by storm and are now making waves everywhere.
Here on One Last Hurrah! its again the same pattern with nine tracks that include both bold covers as well as a couple of standards that they have stamped the In For A Penny brand onto. The album clocks in at an impressive thirty-two minutes. The album begins with ‘On The Dole’ and their great sense of humour shines through. Straight away Sean’s raspy Irish-American accent is what hits you square in the jaw. Fast paced and punky with mandolin that could have been perhaps turned up a wee bit louder. Blue collar Irish working class rock’n’roll from the very off. A tale of getting your cards as we call it here or made redundant and not letting it get you down. We all been there! ‘Tattletale’ follows and begins all folky before the drums kick in and we’re off. It’s rough and ready and feels like a live gig and no surprise as the Bhoys simply recorded themselves playing in the back room of a local bar. There’s no audience so not sure if you could call this a live gig or a practise but anyway the sound is easily passable and the passion and feeling is through the roof so don’t start whining about the sound quality ok! Here a tattletale is an informer whether at school or to the fuzz. Made me remember our wee gang’s mantra at school
“The kid that tells on another kid is a dead kid”
here it seems to just mean some bar-room loudmouth who won’t shut up. ‘Here We Go’ is an album highlight. Again it’s superb with a real catchy tune and like with all the best celtic bands it’s a song you can imagine yourself leaping round to like a right fecking eejit spilling your pint doing that strange can-can dance to that is so popular at celtic-punk gigs! Of course drink features heavily and so f**king what. I don’t hold with all that bollocks about drinking and stereotyping the Irish. It’s part of our culture and if you don’t get it then fair enough. I have plenty of relatives who never touched a drop and many more who touched too much but the pub made the Irish of my generation and listening to this I think Sean’s too. And anyway if you listen to the lyrics of 90% of these songs its clear that us drinkers are in the main losers and these are warnings to others to not become like us! ‘Derry’ is next and if you like what came before then this cover proves what I been saying about them has been right. Written as a poem by the legendary Irish revolutionary Bobby Sands while in prison it has since been covered by such illuminaries as Christy Moore, Neck and Damien Dempsey and others but i don’t think I ever heard it played better than this.
“In the rusty iron chains we sighed for our wains
As our good wives we left in sorrow.
As the mainsails unfurled our curses we hurled
On the English and thoughts of tomorrow”
As moving and passionate version of this song as you will ever hear I tells you and proof that these lads wear their hearts firmly on their sleeves.
(not the album version but still well worth a listen)
Bobby was a member of the IRA jailed for possession of a handgun and jailed in the infamous H-Blocks where he would die on hunger strike in 1981. A terrorist for some but for others worldwide and for ever more an iconic rebel and inspiration. While imprisoned he wrote many articles, poems, letters and songs. One of these was ‘Back Home in Derry’ telling of the forced deportation of Irish people to Australia by the British between 1791 and 1853, when the sentence of penal transportation was commuted to a prison sentence in Ireland.
“A beautiful ballad shouts a vivid and modern sentiment of sorrow for losing freedom and fierce rebellion at the same time: a rebellion not bent by imprisonment or raw conditions which will continue after the death of many” – Marco Principia
You may recognise the tune to ‘Jimmy’n’Jenny’ but all the best bands(and not so great) in Irish music have been recycling the melodies of each others songs for decades. Half the time listening to a Dubliners album you never knew what song it was till the vocals started! Time for some Irish standards next and blimey they couldn’t have picked any better if that was what you are after. It’s a 10 (yes ten!) minute mash up of the two most widely covered songs in celtic-punk with ‘I’ll Tell Me Ma’ and ‘Black Velvet Band’ but with a extra bonus bit tacked onto the end I won’t tell you much about except it again is fecking brilliant. Catchy as hell but they save the best for last with ‘Easter Mourn’. A simply superb song that deserves to lift In For A Penny to superstar status. Released as the lead single for the album just a few weeks ago it so impressed us here that we even did a feature on it. About the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 when a band of Irish volunteers fought the might of the Empire beginning the road that led to full on war with the British. A beautiful song that evokes the spirit of rebellion and the band never sound better.
One Last Hurrah! is an utterly fantastic album and the spirit of Ireland flows right through it. When people mock us foreign born Irish in the future I’m going to give them a copy of this album as proof of the passion and commitment the foreign born Irish have to our ‘home’. So good is it. The Bhoys have made the album available as a Pay What You Want download meaning that it is free for all and sundry but if you got a few quid don’t be a mean bastard and send them a couple of bucks/quid/Euro so they can continue their good work or even just to have a beer on you.
(you can have a listen to One Last Hurrah! by pressing play on the Bandcamp player below before downloading!)
Download One Last Hurrah!
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