Album Of The Week: Dropkick Murphys Signed And Sealed In Blood

St. Patrick's Day 2001, I'm shipping back up to Syracuse, back to school after a spring break spent doing nothing but playing Wrestlemania 2000 on the Nintendo 64 and drinking with my friends in Baltimore. It's five in the morning, and I haven't slept. My friend Nat was supposed to pick me up the previous afternoon, but he had a term paper to finish, and he's been on the phone with my all night, telling me he's almost done and he'll come get me really soon. When he finally does show up, we both pop like five caffeine pills each and start off the seven-hour drive. I put on Sing Loud, Sing Proud, the album that Boston beerpunk crew Dropkick Murphys had released the year before, because he hasn't heard it and I know he'll love it. He does. Nat's not Irish like me, but we both visited my godmother in Belfast a couple of summers ago and drank Guinness and pretended like we belonged there. And anyway, Nat and I spent most of high school pushing people around in VFW Halls around Baltimore and bellowing along with songs about how punks and skins should be united or whatever. (Underrated late '90s song topic: Punk and skin unity. So many songs about that!) And so the Murphys' bagpipes-and-mandolins-and-drunk-dudes roar-alongs are very much hitting us where we live. We play the album a whole bunch on that drive, get there around noon, start drinking immediately, keep popping caffeine pills, start puking by 7, pass out before any of the parties start. That was a great day. The Murphys' new album Signed And Sealed In Blood isn't as good as Sing Loud, Sing Proud, but it's not as far off as you'd expect. 12 years later, I expect a few college kids will use this to soundtrack similar St. Patrick's Day experiences this year. I hope so, anyway.