Flogging Molly’s Float. Surprsingly for me it’s an album of the year that actually came out this year.

FM are a band that I’ve known about for several years. I used to enjoy putting them on while working in the stockroom as it was good, fast tempo working music. I never particularly got into their music and didn’t own any albums. They were good for working to but I always considered them a bit dull for actually listening to.

Sometime in autumn I noticed that they had a new album out and having not listened to them in a number of years I thought I’d give it a shot.

To say I was blown away is an understatement. The first track on the album, Requiem For A Dying Song, bursts out the speakers like an angry Tasmanian Devil and assualts the ears. The first thing that hit me was the polticial nature of the song, something that I’d never noticed in their music before. Was it always there? It seems likely for an American-Irish punk band but I’d never noticed it before. I was so excited by the track that I immediately skipped back to the start instead of heading straight into track two.

I love this album. It picks me up, gets my toes and fingers tapping and I end up doing some light chair dancing if I listen at work. I’m hoping that this is the album that opens up the rest of the FM catalogue to me, I’ll certainly be putting that to the test next year.