Dreaming In Hell’s Kitchen

The US-based The Prodigals have been described as “The Chieftains on caffeine”, but they are really more a blend of English folk rock acts like Fairport Convention allied to the rattling Irishry of The Pogues and Horslips.

This is their third album and a stunning smorgasbord of jiggery-punkery it is too, a finely-bred mix of rock, pop, trad, reggae and folk bits, all played with a genuine rock sensibility that never lets musical technique get in the way of sheer naked excitement.

The feisty ‘Baggot Street Hotel’ incorporates west African rhythms behind a trad tune and an autographical song about Dublin. The bass playing and snappy drums on ‘Jackie Hall’, an 18th century tale from death row, are dazzling, and the band sizzles from start to finish. The foursome’s politics gets an airing in ‘One Good Cause’, set around a football match and arguing against mindless fanaticism and bigotry while simultaneously making your toes tap above the speed limit.

The perennial ‘Lord Randall’ gets a spirited going-over in a Northern Irish version that leads to a superbly evocative instrumental ending. That instrumental prowess blossoms again on the medley ‘The Sailor’s Return’, which again includes some more African flavours. The exuberant ‘Happy Man’ and the reflective ‘The Morning After’ depict the before and after of celebratory carousing, while the closing song ‘Dreaming In Hell’s Kitchen’ reeks of the disenchantment of the idealist.

Sometimes the stage Dublin vocals, as on ‘Jackie Hall’, can grate, but The Prodigals play and sing with passion and unrestrained energy, magically marrying off Ireland’s rural tradition to a modern urban edge to produce rebellious offspring who will surely disturb the faint-hearted. Of course the purists will reach for their blunderbusses, but that can only be a good thing. The Prodigals give good soul, so let’s kill the fatted calf.