i figure that people don't really dread a new u2 album, more that they're just concerned that this future effort won't be something they can call a great album. it won't be something that they can say look, this is why this is one of my favorite bands. i'm pretty sure that for every shitting on u2 post that happens in b&c, there are 5 posts about how something was great. u22222222 was pretty universally liked, i thought, around these parts.
and for all the shitting on u2 that i do, doesn't mean that they weren't one of my favorite bands at one point. then again, so were the dropkick murphys. i'm in a very different position regarding each band, though. with u2, i didn't start listening to them til ATYCLB came out, had about 6 or so years of super fandom, and then majorly burnt myself out to the point where i can't even really listen to most of the albums/songs i still love without getting annoyed. that's right, there are u2 albums and songs that i still consider to be really fucking good songs/albums. but it's still going to be a while before i want to hear them again.
i haven't even listened to nloth in its entirety, and i seriously doubt i'll be checking out the next album. but it's more of a disinterest than hate. hate is what i have for the dropkick murphys these days. unlike u2, who i didn't get into til well after the height of their popularity never mind rise to top-tier rock n roll fame, i've been a dkm fan since they had a whopping 2 albums to their name and have weathered the changes to the line-up and sound in real time rather than over the course of a few months of delving into back catalog. while a lot of the do or die era fans were falling by the wayside, screaming sell out and what have you, i was still very much a fan of sing loud sing proud, still think blackout is a really solid album, and even enjoy the bulk of the warrior's code. in a more optomistic moment, i might even say that some of the meanest of times isn't really that awful. but it's far from great, and going out in style was practically unlistenable. the first couple track (from the meanest of times) and the last song on there stand up just fine on their own, yet crash mightily when held up against similar songs from previous efforts.
with the dropkick murphys, you used to get three kinds of songs: anthemic street punk songs, throwback old school hardcore, and the irish stuff. blackout detractors had issues with there being more irish stuff and the anthemic street punk songs now all having bagpipes. i didn't have a problem here, since the anthemic street punk songs were still pretty damn good, and there was still a mix of all these elements. the balance is pretty much gone now. it's almost entirely ken casey-sung irish stuff. and when they do trot out al barr to do the bagpipe-laden anthemic punk stuff, it falls short of the energy of something like "worker's song," or "as one." oddly enough, i've always cared the least about the token old school hardcore throwback song on a given album ("on the attack" is probably the only one i've ever been a huge fan of anyway), but seeing them entirely fall by the wayside sort of made me realize how much i missed them. these days, with the dropkick murphys, you get one kind of song. and that's just fucking boring. unfortunatly, it sells better than a four-piece street punk band with occasional guest bagpipes and mandolin playing on a couple songs ever did.
yelling "sell out," "they're only doing this for the money" isn't really what i'm doing, though. i'm not actually pissed at the band for making money off the lame, soulless, shitbag path that they took after the success of "shipping up to boston". everyone's gotta pay the bills somehow, and i really don't fault them for making money. in a way, i'm actually angrier with the general public for having shit taste in music; i'm more annoyed that more people like the stuff i find to be bland and gimmicky over what i consider to be better music.
it's going to be much more difficult for me to ignore their upcoming album than it will be for me to ignore u2. u2 was a really big deal to me for a handful of years, and then i moved on. dkm owned a pretty good-sized chunk of my music-listening life. my u2-listening existed almost in a bubble. yes, i have some rather important memories--all tied to this place--from that time, but i don't have the amount of time spent going to shows, or large portions of my music collection so directly related to being a fan of the band. given my age, financial situation, geographical location, family background, probably even my temperament/personality, dkm were definitely a part of the second most important factor in my overall taste in music. sure, i've always ranked the clash much higher in terms of favorite bands/importance/etc, but i wasn't around in the late 70s. i wasn't born until 1984, which is kind of why rancid were the first punk rock band i ever heard. and after i found epitaph/hell cat punk rock, it became regional. because as a high school kid/broke college kid, it's not like i was travelling all over the country/world to see u2 (or anyone else, for that matter). living in massachusetts, what fit the definition of local and hell cat/epitaph? the dropkick murphys. they were great about having really solid opening bands play with them, played the warped tour, and with the incestuous nature of punk rock line-ups and side projects, there's always 3 other bands that stem off from a single guy in a band. if you're doing it right, you start listening to a, b, and c, in a short amount of time you've now heard d, e, f, g, h, i, x, y, z and have half a dozen more to check out. especially now--i thought the internet made that shit easy when i was in college, but back then you still needed a school email to make a facebook page. u2 didn't exactly introduce me to anything else, and didn't present me with anything i could relate to the way dkm, et al. did. this place did, and it's the reason i still come here even though i couldn't really care less about the band at this point. even though i don't end up liking a good 75% of the music you guys recommend, it's still one of the better places i've found online where we've got diverse enough bands thrown around on a regular basis that the 25% i do end up really liking is plenty, considering it's coming from essentially a single source.
now, i said that the last dkm album was pretty much unlistenable. it was seriously difficult to make it through a single listen. i don't even think i managed, i got about halfway through most songs and skipped to the next...only to do the same with the next song, til i was done. how the fuck can a dkm song with springsteen on guest vocals be bad?
this is how:
Dropkick Murphys - Peg 'O My Heart - YouTube
i was willing to accept that long gone are the days of something like:
Dropkick Murphys - The Gauntlet - YouTube
but i don't even have words to describe how much of a let down that last album was, just exasperated noises of frustration.
i can't really imagine the new one will be much better, or any different at all, than the one i couldn't even listen to. given the christmas song, with its painfully cheesy video, and the lead single, it's pretty much a given at this point that this is who the band is now.
, which is generally considered to be good natured. Don't like it? Tough.
