The past few months have been great for belligerent Irish guys: Joe Biden is still vice president, Notre Dame football had its best season in decades, and now we get a new LP from these Boston bruisers. The last one was a concept album about a fictional Irish-American; this one may be their most devil-may-care, mixing hardcore blitz, Pogues instrumentation and Thin Lizzy swing. It works best if you party at bars with names like Paddy O'Mcskullsmashies, but you don't have to be Irish to love the dysfunctional family Xmas anthem "The Season's Upon Us": "My sisters are wack jobs/I wish I had none/Their husbands are losers/And so are their sons."

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."