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	STIFF LITTLE FINGERS Strummerville punk

The near-sellout crowd that saw Stiff Little Fingers play the Paradise last Sunday was split down the middle. A mosh pit formed directly to the left of the pole in the middle of the club, and the kids were slamming as if it were a hardcore show. To the right of the pole, the older fans were watching the band in a more low-key manner, nodding their heads and doing the middle-aged shuffle.

The mixed crowd seemed perfect for a band who’ve settled comfortably into their niche as elder-statesman punks. With only frontman Jake Burns remaining from the original line-up, SLF’s old aggression has been replaced by a looser, pub-like camaraderie. As Burns pointed out more than once, he’s put on a few pounds since his young-and-hungry days (on the other hand, ex-Jam bassist Bruce Foxton, who’s been with SLF for 10 years, looks pretty much the same). Instead of talking politics between songs, he congratulated Boston on the Patriots’ Super Bowl win.

Although less intense than the band caught on the 1980 live album Hanx! (Chrysalis), today’s SLF are tighter and more flexible. Having a master bassist like Foxton in the line-up doesn’t hurt. And they’re professional enough to gear their show equally to the folks on both sides of the pole. They don’t shortchange the great, Clash-inspired material they recorded in the late ’70s, playing most of the standards (at the Paradise, only "Gotta Getaway" was missing) with the necessary speed and spirit. It helps, too, that the theme of old SLF barnstormers like "Tin Soldier," "Suspect Device," and "Wasted Life" — a song about how governments throw away the lives of kids in the military — is now timely on this side of the pond. And their version of Bunny Wailer’s "Roots, Rockers, Radics & Reggae" (played early in Sunday’s set) can still vie with a couple of Clash numbers as the best-ever punk cover of a reggae tune.

The new material was not bad but definitely the work of a different band. Most of it had an anthemic, mid-tempo feel that’s a lot closer to the Alarm’s territory (in fact, drummer Steve Grantley now plays in both bands). The new tunes (many slated for an album that’s about to get released) sported vocal harmonies and semi-pop chorus hooks, neither of which the old band could have brought off. "Every Dollar a Bullet" was the latest of many SLF songs to condemn violence at home in Belfast but the first to borrow from traditional Irish music.

The best of the new songs concerned a topic dear to Burns’s heart, the late Joe Strummer. Heartfelt but not syrupy, the tune did its subject proud with a chorus of "I’ll never play Strummerville again." It sounded even better once you realized he wasn’t saying, "Somerville."