Tossers, The - On A Fine Spring Evening (Album)
You would have to be a drunken Irish patriot, a fan of The Pogues or an appreciator of the rather strange genre that is Celtic Punk in order to enjoy the painful experience that is On a Fine Spring Evening, the latest release by Chicago band The Tossers.
Whilst the album is promising to begin with, a little something like Rancid would have sounded had they been raised in Ireland, the songs just begin to sound a little too same-same after a while to keep the novelty exciting. By the fifth song, one has heard everything this album has to offer and the eight songs that follow are nothing new or interesting, with the exception of track number seven, “221B / The Sneaky Priest (The Gloria Scott)”, an instrumental track which sounds like an Irish rendition of a Metallica song. The final track, “Hunger Strike / Harmony”, is also a little different, a sort of ballad, but somehow manages to actually be worse than all the other not-so-good songs on this album.
Overall On a Fine Spring Evening does not offer much. The Irish accents are fun to hear but after a while become irritating as the songs just continue coming but with every new one sounding too much like the previous. They are lengthy, with annoying names and quite frankly become frustrating to listen to very quickly. The only really exciting bit was some sort of vocal snippet where Gertrude Stein was mentioned, then the man talking admitted to having no teeth and that being the reason he was hard to understand and it had nothing to do with his accent.
You really might enjoy this if you’re a big fan of Irish accents or Celtic music but the whole mixture of Celtic and punk really doesn’t do much for me and I imagine a lot of others would agree. Plus, even for fans of Celtic Punk, this might be tiresome. I can listen to The Pogues any day but The Tossers don’t quite cut it.
