Summary
In keeping with its political roots, [Black] 47 has just released a new album, Iraq, "an attempt to portray in song what's actually going on over there," writes [Larry Kirwan]. But if the album's title and its desert-camo packaging are anything but subtle, the songs themselves offer a more complex, shaded approach to the conflict. "A warped ideology caused this war and, even though we're against it, the last thing the country needs right now is more didactic posturing," writes Kirwan.
Iraq opens with "Stars and Stripes," which takes the tune of "Sloop John B" - the traditional song made famous by the Beach Boys - and adds lyrics that offer a similar sentiment in different context: two soldiers waiting for a chopper to pull them out of an ambush in Anbar Province. Over the music's E Street strut, Kirwan yells the chorus: "Hey President Bush, what are you doing to us? / We've been through hell man - it's time we went home." (Perhaps unintentionally, the song's breakdown sounds much like The Ramones' "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?")Where Black 47 succeeds on Iraq is in more ambivalent songs like "The Battle of Fallujah." That song confronts the hypocrisy of knee-jerk patriotism at home while also capturing the visceral rush of a soldier who's "never felt so alive" as when he's "kickin' ass at the Battle of Fallujah." The conflicting sentiments are best expressed in one of the song's final verses:See the full content of this document
Extract
Black 47
FEW MUSICAL TRADITIONS come as rich with protest songs as Ireland's, and perhaps justly so - its people have had plenty to speak up about. And many have taken that tradition across the ocean, blending it with ...
See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
