Vibes, Tribes and Misdemeanours

Keltic Posse: “Vibes, Tribes and Misdemeanours” (Padlock Records)

As I see it, Keltic Posse faced with a dilemma of Catch 22 proportions. They are undoubtedly adept proponents of rock-a-bye reggae rhythms of every description and tempo. Sometimes they even sing with Jamaican inflections and accents. Problem is they’re mostly Irish and/or Caucasian, not Jamaican.

Their dilemma is this: How can they incorporate more Irish musical idioms into their oeuvre and, consequently sound more authentic while, at the same time, holding on to their remarkable rub-a-dub instrumental skill? At the kernel of this conundrum also lies the good and the bad on Vibes, Tribes and Misdemeanours.

This is really a mini-album. All five tracks are more or less favourites in the ‘Posse’s live show. The opener is the light-footed ‘Steppin’ Stones’ (no relation to ‘I’m not your Steppin’ Stone’). It’s a neat introduction to the up-beat skanking prowess of our seven Keltic desperadoes and features Shelley Buckspan on backing vocals, Michael Buckley on flute and saxophone and Karl Ronan on trombone.

‘Crying’ is a lovers rock-style melancholic reflection on life, from birth to death. We start out crying and we end up dying it refrains in the midst of some pessimistic thoughts on social justice. ‘Superintelligentalienbeing’ is a great, bouncy and showy number live but here it sounds as questionable as the subject matter might suggest. ‘Living In The Ghetto’ is an attempt to Dublinise the all-too-familiar ghettoisation of poverty. In spite of its sincerity in claiming that penury drives you to live it up, it still sounds somewhat gratuitous. ‘City Life’ is a more successful variation on the same theme, supported by a more original score and less cliché.

There’s plenty here on these twenty minutes of jively, lively rock rhythms to hold out promise of an attractive longer playing disc somewhere in the future. Somehow, though, unless Keltic Posse find a solution to that central dilemma, there’ll always be a thread of unease through their recordings.

I don’t envy them the task but the results, if they get it right, would be well worth the effort.

• Patrick Brennan