Happy Ol’ McWeasel – No Offence

No Offence is the latest release by one of the best Boston-Irish drinking bands out there today except that, you guessed it, they’re Slovenian. Consisting largely of traditional drinking songs as well as a few originals – the best work on the album, actually – No Offence is a curiosity indeed; a Dubliner salmagundi of tracks about booze, liberty and the sea from these Balkan boozers’ pitch-perfect pastiche.

Their take on “Drunken Sailer” and the like is accomplished through lengthy scat on each tune’s basic melody, that bookends what would otherwise be merely good tracks with material that must be positively fissionable for live audiences. Given the cadence of these tracks, paced for whiskey-drenched vocal chords and frontal lobes, there is virtually no opportunity to discern that this group is making an elaborate homage to something wholly other. Yet knowing this fact is important on some level: it explains the eponymous track’s odd lyrical choices, justifies the project’s relative simplicity and, above all, is kind of mind-blowing.

Some of those lengthy breakdowns provide insight into the group’s homeland influences, where drummer Ale Voglar slinks into a death metal-staccato beat that can only be an homage to that region’s thriving scene. Otherwise Flogging Molly and Robert Burns rank as the most outstanding references.

Make no mistake: This is an Irish drinking band that just happens not to be Irish. Their style is as frenetic yet reverent of working-class ire as any Southie outfit that makes their living doing the same thing – plus their original content. “Hairy Grizzly” winds up being the best track on the album with a relentlessly catchy punk lick, followed by “No Offence” itself. On a ten-album track relatively undeveloped tracks like“Sail Away” just cost time, but elsewhere the relentless polish shows talent beyond a sophomore band.

It’s reasonable to wonder just how many more punk versions of “Danny Boy” the world is in need of, and in this case it goes without saying that originality is not this group’s main focus, even considering the effort taken to wrap the reduxes in pizzazz. Despite their continued ability to evade attention in America Happy Ol’ McWeasal seems to be checking off boxes, earning cred in this school as it continues to gain prominence. Flogging Molly just had a tour date in Ljubljana, where doubtless McWeasal fans were in attendance. Let’s hope sometime soon the Slovenians return us the favor.