Blaggards are the long running Celtic-punk’n’rock’n’a bit of country band outta Houston, Texas. Fronted by the irrepressible Dub, Paddy Devlin. Amazingly Blagmatic is only Blaggards second studio album, the first being “Standards” from the early 2000s (and to think I gave The Peelers a hard time over the gap between their albums).
What we have here on Blagmatic is 11 tracks of fun and energetic celtic-punk with a Texas swagger. The songs are almost evenly split between originals and traditional Irish standards punked-up and countrified (the album Standards was, well, all standards). The originals songs to me sound like they have as much a hard-rock / metal influence as punk – the intro of Lights of El Paso is pure Danzig until the song takes a cow-punk twist. Wild Rover (“and I spent all my money on the hookers and beer”) is an irreverent punk’n’hoedown. The only disappointment is that I was speaking with Paddy a few years ago and he mentioned a song he was writing about growing up on some of Dublin’s meanest streets (cough, cough) called The Slums of Killiney but it’s not here.
So if you’re looking for a good time (musically speaking) then Blagmatic is the place to head to.
Shite'n'Onions 