
Whipping Boy
COLUMBIA 1995
A-side: ‘We Don’t Need Nobody Else’
Underrated Dubliners at their most moody, dramatic and scathing.
Fearghal McKee’s gift for biting, bittersweet, insightful wordplay was reflected in his onstage intensity and confrontational stagecraft – cutting himself with broken glass at early shows, dousing himself in silver glitter paint at their death throes. It wasn’t always needed when the perfectly named Whipping Boy hit their musical targets, scoring bullseyes on both sides here. The A-side’s offhand confession (“I hit you for the first time today”) was eclipsed by its properly anthemic chorus, yet their finest moment barely shaved the UK charts. B-side ‘Disappointed’ explored an equally fraught and fractured relationship over militaristic drums and pugnacious bass, with McKee’s blunt address to a wayward son (“You are not mine”) heightened by the intensity of Paul Page’s scything guitars (who knows what it would have sounded like had Steve Albini produced it, as first hoped). It’s also worth checking their cover of ‘Caroline Says II’ [‘When We Were Young’, 1995], a hark back to their early Velvets covers band incarnation Lolita. Both sound resplendent on Needle Mythology’s expanded 2021 reissue of Heartworm.