Trouble in Land
After 10 years of frenetic pub gigs in Manhattan and a series of politically militant, genre-scrambling records, you might guess that Black 47 would have run out of anger and energy, or at least smoothed their ragged edges. Not hardly.Trouble in the Landis their most musically incendiary release since their first recorded rampage. Larry Kirwin still sings with a biting Celtic slur and the band still somersaults through an improbable fusion of ska and Irish folk music. But if Black 47 seems spent at all, it's oddly enough in its politics. "Bobby Kennedy" is a predictable lionization of the last family in the world in need of further mythologizing. The title cut sets out to lacerate racist militias but needs more punch than the truism "too many people got guns in the hands." Thankfully, the remaining songs are smarter. "Fallin Off the Edge of America" is a harrowing picture of junkie despair that recallsWarren Zevon's "Carmelita," while "I Got Laid on James Joyce's Grave" is a funky satire of romantic tourism worthy of Swift. Best of all is "Touched By Fire," in which Kerwin evokes the hopes of Irish revolutionaries of the 1920s with beautiful lines such as "The night has come, the stars are achin' / For you and me and all our naked dreams."--Roy Kasten