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Dropkick Murphys are back from tour and headling a few gigs, plus "Chords and Discourse," and more
BY CARLY CARIOLI
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All summer long, Dropkick Murphys — one of the few bands with their own DIY flag corps — blew the rest of punk-rock America off the Warped Tour’s main stage. For an encore, they did the same to the Sex Pistols. Now they’re finally getting around to headlining a few of their own gigs in support of Blackout (Epitaph), whose title track inadvertently became the anthem of New York this summer. The band just recorded a couple of vintage Boston hardcore songs for a limited-edition seven-inch, so there may be a few new covers in tow when they hit Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel (401-272-5876) in Providence on Saturday and Pearl Street (413-584-7810) in Northampton on Sunday. Meanwhile, former Dropkicks singer Mike McColgan, who left the band after their debut album, Do or Die (Hellcat), to become a fireman, is back with a new band, Street Dogs; a new disc, Savin Hill (Crosscheck), out this Tuesday; and a gig singing the national anthem at Fenway Park (877-REDSOX9) on Wednesday. To which we say, screw Springsteen — give us an encore of "Boys on the Docks"! Speaking of screwing Springsteen: a bunch of punks show up to do just that at the Paradise Lounge (617-562-8814) in Boston next Thursday, September 25, in the second edition of "Chords and Discourse," which finds the likes of hardcore-kid-turned-roots-rocker Jake Brennan, Ducky Boys/Dirty Water frontman Mark Lind, and Suspect Device’s Matt Walsh having their way with the Boss’s tunes. Also look for Suspect Device and Dirty Water to play an all-ages CD-release party for TKO Records’ new Boston Scene Report EP on Sunday afternoon at Bill’s Bar (617-421-9678) in Boston. Anyone who remembers Jeff Rosenberg’s last band, the maximum-overdrive punk-noise outfit Pink and Brown, is hereby advised that his new Young People are almost as hauntingly pretty as P&B were scabrous. Credit the pretty part to singer Katie Eastburn, who imbues angular, gospel-and-country-inflected tunes with a steamy melancholy that recalls Chan Marshall and Scout Niblett ("Make me your baby/Have no mercy ’pon me," she whispers on the almost a cappella "The Valley"), and the haunting to Rosenberg, who keeps the undercurrent grisly, spare, and unsettling on the group’s debut, War Prayers (Dim Mak), which is out Tuesday. Two days later, on September 25, the group kick off a tour at AS220 (401-831-9327) in Providence. Meanwhile, their labelmates Battles, featuring former members of Helmet and Don Caballero, are at the Middle East (617-864-EAST) in Cambridge on Tuesday. The "Take Action" tour brings a few of metal’s freshest voices — including Poison the Well, Dillinger Escape Plan, and the awe-inspiring Avenged Sevenfold — to the Palladium (800-477-6849) in Worcester tonight (September 18). The original take-action hardcore outfit, Discharge (Metallica covered their "Free Speech for the Dumb" and Anthrax their "Protest and Survive"), resurface at Lupo’s next Thursday, September 25. And the other opener from the Sex Pistols tour, hellbilly raconteur the Reverend Horton Heat, hits Pearl Street on Wednesday and Avalon (617-423-NEXT) in Boston the following night.
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