I was aware of Whipping Boy for a fair while before becoming a fan. I’d heard them on the Dave Fanning show (Ireland’s John Peel equivalent) but they didn’t really do anything for me. I’d also seen them support Therapy? and I enjoyed them but nothing that made me want to listen further. Their debut, Submarine, is a noisy, Sonic Youth influenced attack of youth, anger and guitar noise, except that it’s more aggressive and wired on cheap speed than SY ever were. But it just didn’t have that spark that would catch my interest.
In the run up to the release of Heartworm, Whipping Boy released two singles which sounded so much better than anything they’d done before, but it was their appearance on Jools Holland that made them stand out. And by the magic of the internet, you can still see it.
About a week later, my friend, Laurence, rang me and told me they were playing my home town of Dundalk and asked, did I want to go? I did. And they were brilliant. And somehow, here I am thirty odd years later, writing about just how much the album they were touring means to me.
The first thing that needs to be said is that Heartworm just doesn’t sound like anyone else. It’s not that there aren’t millions of alt rock albums out there, but somehow, no one has come near this sound. Bands like Fontaines DC cite Whipping Boy as a huge influence, but you’d not notice unless you were told. Heartworm just stands apart with its blend of romance, intellectualism, stories of life in Dublin and some of the uglier sides of life.
Fergal’s lyrics have a more poetical feel to them than your average singer, but he’s not above delivering a line like “Starsky and Hutch gave good TV. And Starsky looked like me” with a knowing smirk. On the album highlight, We Don’t Need Nobody Else, he got accused of misogyny by people who don’t seem to understand what a character is. I guess you don’t often hear a first hand account of domestic violence from the abuser in a song, and to be honest, his delivery of the line, “Yea, and you thought you knew me” is pretty chilling. It is dark, but it’s not glamorising it. It just is. But, when you compare that to the towering romance of A Morning Rise you can see the scope of emotion that the band have at their finger tips.
However, none of these lyrics would mean anything without the band behind them, and the band are alt rock in a way Irish bands never were. Here, they’re the perfect blend of pretty and noisy. They may have sanded off a lot of their rough edges on this album, but they still know how to abuse their effects pedals when needed. The opening song Twinkle, may start with a violin but ends in a wall of guitar noise. The band show their command of dynamics from the beginning, and it’s that push/pull that makes this record so breathtaking.
There is an expanded version of the album that has several gems on it, A Natural, the hidden track on the CD makes a welcome appearance but the highlight is their version of Lou Reed’s Caroline Says 2. Whipping Boy’s version is one of the best covers of all time, as they take such a stark song, manage to wrap it up in an orchestral bow and still make the last lines as devastating as they are.
Whipping Boy broke up in 1998 with their third album unreleased. They have reformed for a few gigs over the years, but the band seems to be finished, but not without leaving their mark on Irish music.
There’s always a discussion about what’s the best Irish album of all time. Is it U2? Is it that horrible auld bollox from up North? Thin Lizzy? I’ve made the argument that Heartworm is the best Irish album of all time and even the person who runs the band’s Facebook account said they didn’t agree with me. They’re wrong. There’s nothing else out there that sounds like this record. The charm, wit, anger, horror, beauty and loud guitars. It’s a singular achievement and while it is starting to gain a wider respect, it deserves a much higher place in Ireland’s music canon.
https://lynkify.in/song/we-dont-need-nobody-else/oRHc50TM
The ways of exile 