The Irish Rovers Have a Rollicking Time with Drunken Sailor

The Irish Rovers is one of those bands I have truly grown up with. My love of Irish music began with them way back in toddlerhood, and I've seen them in concert three times. Their Tales to Warm Your Mind has a secure spot in my top ten favorite albums ever. While I don't have nearly all of the music they have released, I try to keep up with what they're doing, so when I heard that they had a new CD coming out, I knew I'd need to have a listen.

Drunken Sailor doesn't actually hit shelves until the end of the month, but it's available in MP3 form now, so I decided to go ahead and get it in time for St. Patrick's Day. It's a good album for such a festive occasion; the name reflects the general theme: drunkenness and the sea. For the most part, I would say it's more ribald than most Rovers albums, at least the ones in my collection, with drunken debauchery present in almost every song. Because of this oversaturation of dubious topics, I'm not quite as keen on this album as I am on most. Nonetheless, the musicianship is excellent, and it sure sounds like they're having a lot of fun.

The line-up is mostly different now than it was in the early 1960s, but George Millar is still the bandleader and chief songwriter, crafting many of the songs that appear on the albums and adapting many other traditional favorites. Other members include Wilcil McDowell, longtime accordionist for the group, and husky-voiced balladeer John Reynolds, along with George's cousin Ian Millar, percussionist Fred Graham and vocalist Sean O'Driscoll. Nearly 50 years since its formation, the group continues to provide a rollicking good time for evergreen fans.

The title song here is a familiar one that always goes over well at concerts because it makes such a rousing sing-along. Many of the songs here are similarly rowdy and repetitive, with easy opportunities for listeners to chime in on a key line or two or try to keep up with an ever-lengthening list. Examples of the former include the scatterbrained All For Me Grog, the rascally Across the Western Sea and the wistful Pleasant and Delightful, while Good Luck to the Barleymow and The Dublin Pub Crawl will test your memory of potent potables and promising pubs. My favorite song of this type will probably always be The Rattlin' Bog, but that's not included here. Still, these two make for a fun challenge.

The most blush-worthy of the songs are Wh*res and Hounds, in which a drunken sea dog both laments and celebrates the wild living of his past, and the fast-paced Cruising 'Round Yarmouth, which uses a lot of sailing-related double entendres. The upbeat Trust in Drink, The Jolly Roving Tar, The Good Ship Rover and Dear Ould Ireland are all toasts of sorts, at least on the chorus.

Two of the tracks really stand out from the rest to me. Both are nautical in nature, so they still fit the theme, but one is a low-key, heartfelt lament, while the other is a lengthy ballad recounting an infamous tragedy. Sweet Anne is a mellow, mostly solo song of a sailor caught in a deadly storm expressing his regrets over his leaving his true love. The whistle and mandolin makes this gentle song of separation all the more affecting, and it's probably my favorite on the album.

The real highlight, however, is The Titanic, George Millar's six-and-a-half minute-long ode to the calamity, which happened a hundred years ago in April. It begins with a mournful minute-long rendition of Nearer My God to Thee, which was played on the ship as it was sinking. The song has a nice sea shanty flavor to it as it tells the tale of the ship's construction and the great expectations for its maiden voyage that contributed to its early demise. The chorus is a bit too peppy - and repeated a few too many times - for this to have quite the tragic heft of Gordon Lightfoot's Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, but it's still an effective musical recollection of that calamity with some sobering reflections on its significance, and I suspect that this is the track for which the album will be most readily remembered.

Overall, I would say that I prefer Irish Rovers albums that include more of a mix of song types, with the exception of Tales to Warm Your Mind, of course, which I think of as a concept album aimed as much at children as adults. As a rather straight-laced non-drinker, there are only so many rowdy drinking songs I can take in a row before I need a break. Nonetheless, it's great to see the Rovers still going strong. After all these years, they still know how to turn a song into a party.