ALBUM REVIEW: The Real McKenzies – Paul McKenzie Sings On Yer Bike (Stomp Records)
Vancouver’s premier exponents of Celtic-punk are back with their first full-length since the sale of their long-time record label Fat Wreck Chords.
The Real McKenzies returned to Stomp Records, which released 2015’s Rats In The Burlap and 2017’s Two Devils Will Talk, and far from being an unlucky 13th studio album, it’s full of the sort of singalong bangers they’ve built their reputation on.
Their last album, 2022’s Songs Of The Highland, Songs Of The Sea consisted entirely of their take on a dozen famous traditional sea shanties.
Over the course of 13 tracks, On Yer Bike sees the six-piece lay down the sort of rowdy, bagpipe-drenched songs which has made them a favourite from sweaty clubs to festival stages for more than 30 years.
Founder and frontman Paul McKenzie is the only constant in the band, but he’s on fine form as he leads his gang on this collection of drinking anthems, literary tales, dark-tinged folklore and tongue-in-cheek love songs.
After an instrumental intro it’s down to business with Shackleton, a heartfelt tribute to the Antarctic explorer, and there’s another history lesson on The Mad Trapper Of Rat River, a fugitive who led Mounties on a month-long 150-mile pursuit before dying in a shootout.
Elsewhere, McKenzie extols the virtues of learning through reading (Read A Book), falling in love with a sheep (Fiona (Wee Love Ewe)), ageing disgracefully disgracefully (the sax-inflected Liver Spot) and the benefits of eating oily fish (lead single I Wanna Eat Sardines (With Yer Mother)).
There’s a nod to traditional Scottish songwriting in I Love A Lassie/Roamin’ In The Gloamin and the tongue-twister The Ragged Rock, but the album’s centrepiece is The Sawney Bean Trilogy, three songs about the legendary incestuous cannibal clan said to have lived in caves in Scotland in the 16th century.
They’re three very different songs; A Cannibal’s Lament has a country twang, Black Agnes is a twisted love ode to Agnes Douglas, a witch who shared Bean’s proclivities, darkly declaring: “Agnes darling can’t you see that I’m in love with you/You stole the hearts of Scotsmen/And cleaved them right in two.”
The final part, The Reckoning Of Sawney Bean, tells of the clan’s downfall at the hands of King James VI, and the cannibal chief’s defiant response: “Do you think that we’re afraid to die/I’ll spit your brother’s blood back in your eye.”
The album closes out with title track On Yer Bike, a rousing closer which merely whets the appetite for more. If punk with bagpipes is your thing, few do it better than The Real McKenzies, and it’s great to have them back and in such fine fettle. 8/10.
