Shilelagh Law’s sixth album, “Line ‘Em Up,” marries the old partying energy with a more reflective approach.
By Colleen Taylor
Some neighborhoods are known for their cuisine, others for their architecture, their community centers, or even their dive bars. The North Bronx/Yonkers neighborhood is known for its sound—and that sound is synonymous with Shilelagh Law. Since 1998, the lads of Shilelagh Law have been fueling the streets of New York City’s Irish sectors with energetic, feel good trad-rock music. The band has helped to define that special cross-cultural subgenre of music we now identify as “New York Irish.” They have written, played, and performed the songs that make that neighborhood in New York not only feel but also sound quintessentially Irish.
Having trademarked a regional subgenre, having cultivated a neighborhood’s very identity through music, you’d think their work was complete, that they could relax and just keep on gigging. But this band is at it again, more than geared up than ever for another round. Next month, Shilelagh Law’s sixth and most creatively ambitious album, “Line ‘Em Up,” will launch. This time every single track on the record is an original composition. And this time, Shilelagh Law isn’t just giving Irish New York City its sound, they’re giving the neighborhood its story as well.
Shilelagh Law’s music has always been inflected with nostalgia, but “Line ‘Em Up” goes beyond nostalgia into self-reflection. Each original composition interrogates the individual’s life experience within the context of Irish America. For instance, “How Are You Keeping?”, one of my favorite songs on the album, participates in the Irish love ballad genre, but it’s also an individual narrative that thinks about change, time, and lost loves. Like the album as a whole, “How Are You Keeping?” puts a personal inflection on the greater narrative of where Irish America has been and what it has come to now. In short, the album deals in historical and personal memory and delights in revisiting those memories.
The quintessential Shilelagh Law style is present throughout the album, reflecting that same duality of the historical and personal that the lyrics do. The band’s trademark vocals, its mix of guitar chords and fiddle strings, ring true like always. But I can also sense a conscious attempt to incorporate the traditional tunes so many of the band members were raised on, like the tune “St. Patrick’s Day” for example, into a more modern, original crossover. And they have fun with it. “Getting Lucky” blends the actual set dance tune “St. Patrick’s Day”—something most would recognize from parish dances, ceilis, feiseanna or the fleadh—with a new, flirtatious original set of lyrics about meeting a lady on Patrick’s Day (featuring Kathleen Vesey Fee from Celtic Cross). In this one song, the historical Irish experience of St. Patrick’s Day meets the modern-day American one. The song seems to enjoy that stark contrast between the traditional and the playful.
I appreciate the way in which “Line ‘Em Up” pushes Shilelagh Law outside of its comfort zone. This album nudges them into more poetic, lyrical territory. Although the album is buzzing with energy, like all their music, it is also, at times, quieter, more reflective, dare I say wiser? Again, it’s that trademark New York Irish band tendency to revere history and Irish ancestry while also not taking Irish culture too seriously. Shilelagh Law inserts some cheekiness about drinking and tomfoolery into their album’s mix. Because, after all, parties are part of the historical narrative too.
Ancestral history and jest marry most perfectly in the song “Raise Hell.” This one is closest to songwriter Richard Popovic’s heart. It reflects his double life as musician and stay-at-home dad. He set the scene of writing the song: “I clearly remember, after a long day and sleepless night with the kids, scratching out the lines ‘I used to raise hell, now I’m raising two kids,’ and literally laughing out loud because it summed up my life in that moment so perfectly.” There is an even deeper message of paternalism at work in the album as well. Popovic explains the album celebrates youth and “raising hell” retrospectively, and he hopes the younger fans inherit the sound and energy of “Line ‘Em Up.” He said, “[it’s about] the symbolic passing of the torch to our younger fans.”
But Shilelagh Law isn’t that tired yet. And “Line ‘Em Up” definitely isn’t the album to put on before you go to bed. The energy of the band’s creative juices sings loud throughout. Popovic explained how the fans of Shilelagh Law gave life to this latest original endeavor. As he described it, “Having thousands of people sing words that once only existed as lines scribbled in the margin of a notebook is a thrill that never gets old.” No doubt those fans will be just as thrilled this time to have a whole new repertoire of songs to learn the lyrics to.
What Shilelagh Law’s album shows me, more than anything, is the powerful link between a person’s individual life story and the network of history, time, place and culture. Shilelagh Law’s original music describes and celebrates that cultural network as it exists in the Irish-American afterlives of New York. “Line ‘Em Up,” tells us: we are where we come from. In this case, where we come from sounds one-of-a-kind, and it sounds great.
