Delirium in the heart of Mullingar

REVIEW: Scally and the Dirty Rats, the Stables, Mullingar, June 25

Will Russell

Scally and The Dirty Rats, in a backroom in the heart of Mullingar, are working the Saturday night crowd into a delirium. To find them, I walk off a raucous Dominick Street into Smiddy’s, through a bar thronged with revellers and past a chap singing a curious version of ‘Lady Madonna’. On the TV above him, Macca, in collarless Beatles suit, plays the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury.

I make my way to the rollicking music room in the rear. Scally, a cool cat in yellow Brando biker jacket and black vinyl strides, is ripping into the opening song of the set, ‘Look In The Mirror’, and the first thing that strikes you is the punk of it, particularly late 70s/early 80s east LA punk. The place is heaving. Two minutes in, the crowd are moshing. The Scally fans have come to party.

They’ve come in large numbers for the launch of Some Buzz, the debut album from Scally and The Dirty Rats. The record is a collection of songs Scally wrote over the last seven years, documenting his singular vision of his home town, externalising his jagged stream of consciousness – a mad Messiah badgering the listener to wrestle their demons.

The songs channel early Chili Peppers, Fun House Stooges and possess flecks of the shape-shifting on Kendrick Lamar’s recent record, Mr. Morale and The Big Steppers.

Live, a different beast manifests, as the bleed of guitarists Ben Mulligan and Jay Wile create the speed of the Damned ‘New Rose’, and Scally becomes an incarnation of Darby Crash fronting The Germs. Colin O’Brien’s drums set a frenetic tempo throughout, while Eddie Reynold’s delicious low end ensures a grimy type of funk.

Shortly after, ‘Where Is Rock n’ Roll?’ grants a chance of a breather, Scally calls out, Jonathan Rotten style – "where in this sh****le? where is rock n’ roll?" Indeed. It’s a question that’s been asked more than once in this particular room.

He dedicates ‘Football’s Greatest’ to ‘Flynner’, who he says is "madder than anyone in this room". It topples into DC hardcore, as the band, a five-headed beast, match each other for pace, a barrage of drubbed chords thrashing on the beat. Scally, a demented ringmaster, goads them on and leaps into ‘Guilty’, and the gap between artist and crowd compresses.

On lead single ‘Freebird’, The Dirty Rats talk illicit sex, addiction and self-destruction on a Beastie Boys/Jane’s Addiction mashup that perversely makes those odious affairs sound a whole lot of fun – the crowd pogoing and yahooing – Scally occupying grotesque characters, delivering their vapid point of view. ‘Get Ready For War’ serves a socialist-anarchist gumbo, Scally lathered in sweat and somewhere, just faintly you hear a country twang in the stew, Lynyrd Skynyrd style. Marvellous.

We’ve barely grazed 25 minutes. A stag is been carted across a baying mass, and while Scally divvies out prizes and shots of firewater, The Dirty Rats perform a freeform slouching jazz-blues breakdown which is as interesting as it is unexpected. Shirt now discarded, Scally patrols the stage, lean and brutal, and from the blur of the drumkit, the martial beat of ‘Filthy Animal’ is a battle cry – the song staggers and loops, encompassing The Dirty Rats’ DNA.

It’s the most compelling of songs, featuring a multiplicity of styles, teetering to and dragging away from the chasm. There’s a night ahead, people are making out, grown men are Irish dancing – is that a fight? No, it’s a mating ritual, somewhere a glass breaks and a man howls. The cowpunk stomp of ‘We’re At It Again’ causes the makings of a Siege of Ennis that descends into a good-natured tussle.

‘The 7TH Commandment’ is the sum part of the three-minute encore, finishing a set that tips just north of an hour. Scally stands defiant, blood streaming from his ceann down his chest.

The Dirty Rats down tools and strut away. The musical mainstream may baulk at the perversion, subversion and ambiguity of Scally and The Dirty Rats and their wicked cocktail of punk, blues, funk, metal and cowpunk – but isn’t that rock and roll?