This came out in 2000 — or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
“Do you think they met in the prison yard?” asked the wife after seeing the pic of New York Celtic-rock outfit Black 47 on their seventh CD Trouble In The Land.
OK, so this sextet of Irish ex-pats are easily the motleyest crew since The Pogues; in Irish music circles, they’re also one of the finest. And the most eclectic. Taking their name from the darkest year of the Potato Famine, leader Larry Kirwan and his cohorts inject strains of rap, rock and reggae into their traditional pipe-and-whistle folk, birthing a versatile hybrid not unlike Dexy’s Midnight Runners but far less annoying. It goes down smooth as a blended whiskey even as it bolsters Kirwan’s whip-smart lyrics and passionate tunesmithery — Trouble, among other things, delivers an ode to Bobby Kennedy, bases one track on the Countess de Markievicz, and reinterprets Oh When The Saints Go Marching In as a Celtic-ska road-band chronicle. They may not be much to look at, but man, are they easy on the ears.
