I’ve been out of Ireland a long time So I’ll mainly be doing older bands but 
Oh and a huge shout out to Just Mustard, the only good band from my home town. Albini inspired noisy indie.
But this post is about Whipping Boy.
WB are one of the great could have been bands out of Ireland. They released their first album Submarine in ’92 and it was a huge, dissonant mess of an album. Noise, shoegaze and speed fuelled aggression; it had it all but was pretty much ignored. I’m re-listening to this as I type. This is easily one of the great forgotten albums, there was no way Ireland was ready for this.
Buffalo would probably be the best place to start with this album. It pretty much sums up what they were about at this point and was a phenomenal set closer to their live show.
They came back 3 years later with Heartworm which for me is probably the best Irish album of all time.
The song writing was a more mature (but not in a wanker way), there was still noise but it was far more controlled. The songs had warmth and Fergal’s poetic; if sometimes vague lyrics became the main focus. I’d put them in with the warmer works of Mercury Rev and the Flaming Lips at this point, maybe a proto Twilight Sad feel to things.
The song they’re probably best known for is we don’t need nobody else. An incredible song that mocks Irish greed, Bono, tackles domestic violence and still ends up as a you and me against the world anthem.
