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You must love Flogging Molly. If you don't know who Flogging Molly is by now, you're missing out. This band puts on the best live show out there, guaranteed to make you dance, and their songs end up stuck in your head for days. You may already have "To Youth (Sweet Roisin Dubh)" stuck in yours, as it's been haunting me for weeks. It seems odd to talk about a punk band having a "first single," but then again, Flogging Molly isn't your average punk band.

 

If a traditional Irish band ran away with a California punk band and had a love child, it would sound like Flogging Molly. On this record, though, there's even more Irish and less punk, as singer Dave King delves into lesser-known patches of Irish history ("Tobacco Island") and duets with Lucinda Williams on the traditional-sounding "Factory Girls." My favorite, though, is the pirate tune "Seven Deadly Sins." There's still room for the punks, though, and bassist Nathen Maxwell takes the microphone on "Queen Anne's Revenge." How can you not love a band that sings about pirates and Cromwell, as well as tributes to his homeland and a scathing indictment of--who else?--President Bush.

I can't say enough good things about this band. Their instrument list is ridiculously long, and there's not one of the seven members that doesn't play at least two of them. I don't know what it is about Irish music that melds so well with punk rock (The Pogues, Dropkick Murphys come to mind), but only Flogging Molly creates such a head-on collision between two seemingly dissimilar genres.

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