My Dad doesn’t know an awful lot about music, but there are three central tenets to his musical philosophy he stands firm upon. Firstly, he knows that Bob Dylan only ever produced one good album, his
Best of; secondly, Shane MacGowan is a
poet and a
visionary; and thirdly, the Saw Doctors are the greatest rock & roll band of all time. I’m not sure from where he’s got the latter impression: as a band they’re well after his time and his record collection as of April 2006 numbers approximately two (the aforementioned Dylan and the Chieftain’s
Long Black Veil), one of them being mine. However, I’m prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt- he’s right about Shane-O, and his dismissal of Dylan’s wider catalogue is due more to his love of that particular CD than anything else- maybe the Saw Doctors are the best rock & roll band of our day. To their credit, they are the most successful Irish rock band since U2 but that particular field hasn’t been all that green [no pun intended] in recent years.
The Saw Doctors are somewhat of an anomaly in modern music: a very successful rock group which combines a number of quite unorthodox (read: unpopular) influences to produce a sound all of their own making, without parallel. There’s notable elements in their sound of Northern Irish pop-punk winners The Undertones, Carton’s tense northern drawl and melodic ear bearing marked resemblance to Feargal Sharkey’s. American influence is also apparent: a number of tracks hark back to the pre-British invasion mid-tempo rock of Roy Orbison, Del Shannon et al., while Carton himself Bruce Springsteen could be described as a wittier, more Irish Bruce Springsteen. This obviously has an effect on the instrumentation used, however the standard rock n’ roll five-piece set up isn’t all there is to the band. With a strong traditional influence to their music, we see mandolin, fiddle, chantin, flute and accordion to produce a hybrid of styles not dissimilar to the Pogues, yet more separated.
The group became overnight sensations in Ireland in 1990 with the release of the single ‘I Useta Love Her,’ an updated version of an old punk song of frontman Davy Carton’s, and the subsequent re-release of debut single ‘N17’ ensured 1991’s
If This Is Rock and Roll, I Want My Old Job Back became one of the most anticipated releases of the decade. Now, it’s not essential to know anything about the political and social climate in Ireland at the time, nor is it particularly useful knowledge in all honesty, but it is a great deal
funnier. Ireland of the late ‘80s-early ‘90s was a profoundly different prospect to what it is today- pre-economic boom, pre-Commitments. Unemployment was rife, emigration numbered in the tens of thousands each year and the Catholic Church still had a strong hold over the lives of Irish people.
As punk stalwarts, the band felt it their obligation to provide social commentary through their music- which is fine, until you clash with “the mob”. Yes, ‘I Useta Love Her’ managed to incur the wrath of the Church with the wonderfully refined lyric:
’I useta see her up the chapel when she went to Sunday mass/And when she’d go up to receive I’d kneel down and watch her pass/The glory of her ass’. Oh, matron! Interestingly, the thought of a man enjoying the fruits of the rump over a good wholesome mass proved far more objectionable than subsequent sex-filled verses, but as we all know priests are just as game for a wallop as the rest of us. ‘N17,’ on the other, tackles more serious subject matter with the same sense of rural humour. An emigrant’s lament (I rely on that word too much), ‘N17’ sees Carton recall with fondness the journey from his native Tuam to Galway on the N17 ‘highway,’ managing to some synthesis between being genuinely touching and downright ridiculous: the chorus of
’I wish I was on that N17/Stone walls and the grasses green’ shows a strange delight in the mundane spurred by the loneliness and isolation of the migrant’s life.
Nowhere on the album are the anthemic heights of ‘I Useta Love Her’ and ‘N17’ matched, but there is plenty on offer for the discerning listener to delight in. Not only can Carton deliver the strong pop choruses but he’s equally capable of a type of understated, almost
anti-chorus on occasion. A prime example is ‘Why Do I Always Want You,’ in which the steadily building verse resolves not to an expansive pop chorus but cuts to a slow, bluesy hook which is at first disconcerting but oddly hypnotic and a definite highlight. Album-closer ‘I Hope You Meet Again’ trumps the lot in my mind, however, again boasting a decidedly non-
pop chorus despite expectations. Unfortunately, these high moments are spread all too thinly across the album’s fifteen tracks, minimising its potential as a great record.
