Their ninth album, ‘11 Short Stories of Pain & Glory,’ is the logical next step in that direction. What DROPKICK MURPHYS offer in 2017, has little to do with their punk roots. Celtic folk is largely absent as well. Instead, these elements are present only as a final aesthetic touch. The foundation of the new material is the desire to write catchy, uplifting and universally relatable songs.

And here comes the good news and the bad news about ‘11 Short Stories of Pain & Glory.’ The good news is that the album really does feature songs that are colossal in terms of concept, execution and impact – and have the potential to become anthems in them. The bad news is that the number of those songs on the record is much lower than 11.

Things start nice and slow with ‘The lonesome Boatman’ which features only bagpipes, percussion and gang chants with no lyrics. By all intents and purposes, this is an intro. What it sets the stage for is the rather basic first track ‘Rebels with a Cause’ – a by-the-numbers dynamic rock song with a chorus that isn’t catchy enough. The contrast with ‘Blood’ – one of the highlights of the album – is stark. By keeping things mid-paced, lacing bagpipes with simple guitar chords, and having a gang chant of “Blood! Blood” DROPKICK get stuck in your brain much more successfully.

‘Sandlot’ is a wink towards the band’s earlier days, with a faster tempo, a cool melody in the chorus and a lyric about how things used to be. On the flipside, ‘First Class Loser’ is a song as annoying as the character it portrays. ‘Paying My Way’ combines the drumbeat from ‘We Will Rock you’ with a simple, yet catchy piano melody. This is not punk at all. Neither is there anything Irish about it. Just a stadium rock song celebrating blue collar values. It would have been at home on Springsteen’s ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ instead of ‘Factory,’ for example.

What remains is one more folk song (‘I Had a Hat’), one decent rocker (‘Kicked to the Curb’), a remake of Liverpool and Celtics anthem ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ (which is good), and a powerful tribute to the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing (‘4-15-13’). And this should have been where the curtains drop. But it isn’t and we get another lame track – ‘Until the Next Time.’

 

When you draw the line, this is an album that takes two songs to start, two songs to end, and mostly struggles to find its way in between. ’11 Short Stories of Pain and Glory’ is bolder and more impactful in its strong moments than predecessors ‘Going Out in Style’ (2011) and ‘Signed and Sealed in Blood’ (2013). And more mediocre in its weaker ones. Still, it is a record that shows that greatness is within the reach of DROPKICK MURPHYS. With more consistency, they will get there.