With St. Patrick's Day looming, I've been on the hunt for something new to sing at the table. It's not that I'm sick of "The Irish Rover" - quite impossible - I merely want the drinking to last that bit longer. Canadian rock troupe McKenna have stuck together an album that perhaps runs too long for its own good. Maybe there is such a thing as too much of a good thing after all…
There are 24 songs on this album with four being select cuts from the studio. The album sustains a good balance between infectious acoustic rock, as in "Hit and Run" and pseudo-serious country songs like "Babymaker". Hailing from Ontario, Canada, the band make their sense of national pride felt with a hearty offering of "O Canada".
Relating back to St. Patrick's Day, this album is crowned by three minutes or so of unabashed brilliance. "Guinness for Two" is a sorrow-sodden reflection on lost love, symbolized by a pint of the black stuff. If The Dubliners had wrote this, you'd know all about it. Worth the price of the CD alone.
Essentially, McKenna have squeezed two albums worth of music into one. The result is an album that you'll struggle to swallow in one gulp and leaves us with reservations about what would otherwise be a terrific collection of Canadian-Irish folk-rock.