Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Happy Ol` McWeasel
Label: Sindian Underground
Released: 2012
Length: 36:00
Rating: 4.5/5
What would a person do without music to »get hyped to«? Music to »switch off to«. When Friday rolls around and you go looking for a well-earned pint, or a whole bunch of them. It doesn’t get better than that! The Pouges, The Dubliners, Flogging Molly… in Slovenian terms, to be explicit – the Styrian way. If your favorite football team happens to be on the TV at the same time, with a bucket of popcorn in your lap, that kind of ambience gets pretty damn close to the Elysian Fields. So here comes the »Happy Old Weasel«, though not the one from the cover of »Weasels Ripped My Flesh«, the avant-garde vision of the great Frank Zappa.
Happy Ol’ McWeasel are potent young scamps bursting with surplus testosterone, so they swing their guitars with a much more wound-up sound than the gags listed in the first paragraph. You can tell the punk influence doesn’t reach back far into the past; instead it flirts in a friendly way with the vibe of ninety’s skate punk like Millencolin, and further on with bands like NOFX, Rancid and Pennywise (right away in the opening title track of the album). That positivity occasionally lines up with the energetic mischief of Elvis Jackson, so it wouldn’t be silly to think about joint tours with them. All of this still blends very neatly with the integration of Irish-Celtic folk elements. It’s trivially predictable, sure, but the band makes up for it with a biting, expansive energy across the album’s 36:00 minutes. As far as songwriting goes, the moment of the happiest balance between Irish melos and the punk component is the song Murphy’s Law. The band masterfully smashes the trivial riff-based foundation with arrangements of harmonized melodic ornaments, combining banjo, viola and accordion. The lads also clearly know how to build up the mood. In Better Times the verse is kicked off by banjo accompanying the vocals, followed by an avalanche of riffs in the chorus, where the mood reaches its »crescendo«. This arranging principle is perfectly clear to the band, which proves there are some seasoned guys in the lineup.
Happy Ol’ McWeasel delivered excellent production on their debut. »No Offence…« is a vividly potent album that, despite its generously emphasized, voluminous curtain of riffs, doesn’t suffer from even a smidge of artificial studio sterility, and instead grabs hold at full tilt in its unbridled onslaught. Thanks to the integration of strings, accordion, acoustic guitar and banjo, we can say the album keeps a sonic »organic« feel, which is essential for the essence of the album to reach the listener in all its authenticity.
Happy Ol’ McWeasel are excellent musicians and an exceptionally tight-knit crew that breathes as one, like a true perpetuum mobile. True, the songs are framed in templates, loaded onto seductive melodies and the adrenaline-fueled rage of »polka« rhythms, and they crawl right under your skin, which is the band’s basic purpose anyway – but they’re also splendidly and subtly arranged. That’s of course demanded by the integration of folk elements, handled by the viola, accordion and banjo. In this multilayered approach the guys manage to knead together charges that instantly win over the crowd, while also proving the band is hugely committed to polishing the arrangements and has no wish to lay down half-hearted statements on tape. The songs No Offence… and Hairy Grizzly are in this respect ideal candidates for release as standalone singles.
Even though the band covered as many as 4 of the 10 songs, ones that come from the seafaring tradition of vagabonding salty Irish sea dogs of the not-so-distant past (Irish Rover among them, which Pouges and The Dubliners also tackled in their day), the remaining half-dozen originals on the album are distinguished by outstanding expressive quality, tangible substance and character, which confirms the aforementioned talent and the band’s high level of commitment to offering the audience the best they know how and are able to give at this point on their evolutionary path. The two finest examples of this dedication to polishing songs into a melodically finished form on the album are Still In The League and Sail Away, where a superb combination of full acoustic arrangements steeped in the melancholy of vocal expression steps into the foreground
Let’s linger on the vocals for a moment. They don’t radiate quite as concentrated a dose of alcohol fumes as the most representative voices of the genre, led by Shane MacGowan. Expecting anything like that from Happy Ol’ McWeasel is almost impossible, and yet the mild throatiness and the attempts at falsetto clowning through the nose deliver the required appeal and compatibility in every single song on the album »No Offrence…. The band has also carefully arranged the harmonies of the backing vocals, which radiate the authenticity of street gangs bellowing, or pub crowds cheering.
»No Offence…« is a cracking hybrid debut from the Irish-Celtic punk rock lunatics Happy Ol’ McWeasel. It serves up a juicy fistful of 10 finely polished, meticulously arranged songs, brimming with adrenaline and a contagious mix of punk rawness and the solemn swell of Irish folk melody, all woven into a seductive tangle that burrows under your skin from the very first listen. The band has hit its basic goal. With »No Offence…« they’re flinging wide the doors of every venue where beer likes to flow by the gallon. From real Irish pubs to club rooms, all the way up to bigger halls. Only a few will turn their backs on the compact, bouncy positivity that »No Offence…« gives off. As for the bitter-hearted, we’re not interested in them this time anyway, right?
Line-up
Gregor Jančič – vocals
Primož Zajšek – accordion
Tine Trapečar – banjo, acoustic guitar
Aleš Pišotek – electric guitar
Martin Bezjak – viola
Bine Zorko – bass guitar
Aleš Voglar – drums, percussion
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Uroš Dokl – Irish whistle on track no. 6
Klub MC choir – backing vocals on tracks no. 1, 7 and 8
Production
Martin Bezjak & Happy Ol` McWeasel
Track list
1. No Offence
2. Irish Rover
3. Sail Away
4. Drunken Sailor
5. Hairy Grizzly
6. Foggy Dew
7. Still In The League
8. Murphy’s Law
9. Danny Boy
10. Better Times
