The likes of Damien Dempsey and Jinx Lennon aside, not too many Irish acts have been putting the boot into Irish society of late – which is strange, really, given the current state of our broke and beleaguered nation. Angry young Dublin guitar merchants The Rags seem determined to make their feelings known, and with song titles like ‘A Murderous Chant’, ‘Gatling Gun’ and ‘Bury The Queen’, it’s obvious that they’re not happy.
Their ostentatious, and occasionally pretentious, literary references are a dead giveaway. The title-track opens with a sample of a scratchy old recording of James Joyce and references Yeats in the opening line (“Romance is dead/ At least that’s what William Butler said”), before morphing into a modern day call to arms: “I had a dream that there was blood in the stream and the heads of the parliament drowned face-down/ Gucci suits and blank cheque books burst the banks of the Liffey and we owned the city.” It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but the delivery is spot on.
Singing in a near-Cockney accent, at times lead singer Daniel Anderson sounds a little too close to Paul Weller or Pete Doherty for comfort, but let’s not hold that against him (it’ll undoubtedly help them in the UK). Short, sharp and occasionally savage, while A National Light isn’t especially musically original, at least half of these punchy, driving and energetic tracks are worthy of being released as singles (‘Bin Bag’, Uniforms & Neckties’, etc).
All told, it’s not half bad. Who knows? We may yet see The Rags earn some riches.