Most people working day jobs dream of being able to leave their daily grindstones and do something they love and get paid for it too – not so Mike McColgan, who left the ineffable Boston-Irish punkers the Dropkick Murphys in order to become a fire-fighter. Now he’s re-entered the musical arena with Street Dogs, a firmly street-based punk band that takes the Gaelic melodies of DKM and merges them with the dirty street punk usually expounded by the likes of the Bouncing Souls.
Savin Hill is hardly the most cerebral of albums, with most of the subject matter revolving around growing up, friendship and fighting. ‘Justifiable Fisticuffs’ is an exercise in simplistic song writing, a casual melody and somewhat uninspired lyrics somehow combining to create a thoroughly enjoyable mob-handed shout-along that perhaps characterises Savin Hill as a whole. ‘When It Ends’ takes a more reflective theme that sounds so much like the Bouncing Souls that it could be an outtake from Anchors Aweigh which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but after six albums from the ‘Souls you have to wonder whether Street Dogs can really improve on them through imitation.
It’s not as if Savin Hill is a necessarily bad album, it just doesn’t do anything even remotely new – but since when is that a denigration for a punk band? ‘Don’t Preach To Me’ is a dumbly predictable middle-finger to publicly moralising celebrities that sounds painfully average when placed next to the drunkenly defiant anthem ‘Declaration’ which is by far and away the strongest track, with its avoidance of familiar clichés and the employment of a couple of simplistic melodies that work wonders in elevating the song above the sum of its parts. It’s perhaps a touch paradoxical to state which songs are better than others because the vast majority sound alike and it’s simply a question of whether you like American street punk that will define whether you like Savin Hill.
That might sound lazy, but Savin Hill’s adherence to the genre is so total that it’s both a boon and a hindrance – if you like the Bouncing Souls (how many times have I mentioned them now? Seriously, the resemblance is uncanny) then you’ll lap this up but if you don’t then it’s best to steer clear. There’s nothing new here but there is an endearing sense of defiance embedded within the categorisation-friendly styles on show here because it’s so opposed to anything that’s been even slightly popular during the last decade or so and that’s one of Savin Hill’s strongest points, the fact that it’s unashamedly street, abrasive and positively reeks of stale beer.
Ben
www.crosscheckrecords.com
www.street-dogs.com