Culture

4/5

Live on Lansdowne is the second live album from Celtic Punk group Dropkick Murphys, second live album. It consists of an entirely new set from their original St. Patricks Day live album, which came out back in 2002.
Live CDs make me apprehensive: generally, they sound like shit because the recording is shit and the singers usually don’t have auto-tuner turned on, so they sound like shit too. In all honesty, if I wanted to listen to a wall of noise blasting at me over hundreds of people screaming, which is what live albums usually are, I would go to a Castle Street party. However, as ‘Famous for Nothing’, the opening track, started, I was surprised. I just wanted to launch myself into a moshpit and beat up a random, which, looking at their DVD, seems like the acceptable thing to do at a Dropkick Murphys show.
This is, without a doubt, the best live album I have ever heard. The recording sounds perfect and it captures the energy of the Dropkick Murphys’ live show without sacrificing the quality from their studio albums. The sound produced by these Boston punks is raw and rough-edged and songs such as ‘Sunshine Highway’ and ‘Tessie’ sound at their best when played like this. ‘Dirty Glass’ however, was a disappointment. Liza Graves’ vocals were flat, harsh, and lacking energy.
The high point of the album was the final track, ‘Shipping off to Boston’: it was powerful and ferocious and the accompaniment by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, another iconic band from Boston, made it sound that much better!
Live on Lansdowne is well worth listening to; in fact I would say an essential album to hear in 2010. I know that after listening to this album I’m going to do my best to get to the next Dropkick Murphys’ concert to come my way.