The Whole Tribe Rocks: A Love Letter to a great ep by an underappreciated band

By Siri Harrison

I grew up listening to The Whole Tribe Sings, but it was years before I came to learn their name, or the names of any of their songs. One song in particular stayed in my mind as “the Dragon King’s funeral song” (later known to me as “Stray”) which I dubbed so because of the mournful and elegant trumpet solo which punctuates the second half of the song. I thought it would be fitting for some grand ceremony, and since I was reading Day of the Dragon King in the Magic Treehouse series, I took inspiration. This association makes no sense now, but it’s clear that the music of Whole Tribe Sings left a lasting impression on me if I remembered it with such an extravagant description!
    Strangely, whether due to limited popularity or lack of acknowledgment in the US, the Whole Tribe sings, Irish alternative folk rock band, is near impossible to find online. Their frontman, Declan McLaughlin, who has a solo career of his own, is accessible through his facebook and spotify accounts, and there are mentions of the band’s 2006 album A History of Hard Luck on a handful of music sites and platforms, but these are the only traces of them in the digital world. This is what makes my (dad’s) aged CD of their self-titled EP a treasure all the more precious. 
    The work consists of five perfect songs, and is not a second longer than it should be. It is only a truly brilliant artist who can combine soaring, beltable melodies with gut punches of emotion in the same exact track. The horns, played by Thomás MacSeáin, take on a life of their own, switching from jazzy and danceable to wailing like a voice coming straight from his soul, from one song to another. They are the common theme leading us through the five tracks, each of which is its own cohesive story, masterfully written and performed with pure energy and heart. 
There is, of course, “Stray,” (the Dragon King’s funeral song), a desperate ballad of a man losing someone he loves because of his own destructive behavior, but each song is absolutely memorable in its own right: “Love Me Still” is a heart-wrenching song by someone asking if the woman he loves can ever forget “the way [he] let her down” and admitting “of all the wrongs of which I have a few, the only wrong that I regret’s the wrong I did by you.” (Hmmm, maybe the horns aren’t the only common theme on this record…still, even if the characters might, the Tribe never dips into self-pitying territory. The sad moments are nothing short of heartfelt and honest—or at least honest from the perspectives of characters who are fed up with themselves or those around them.) “Fine Day” grooves over lyrics depicting the economic decay of a community and the vices people turn to as a result: “entertainment scares me when the bouncer kicks to kill. If it wasn’t for the lack of drugs we’d all be dancing still.” This song and the next track, “Last Line,” are a knockout one-two punch of biting social commentary and some of the catchiest, most liberated (and yet air-tight) instrument-playing to ever enter my ear. “Last Line” tears into celebrity culture and the tabloidization of the news, warning “you yourself will hide away, afraid of printed words they’ll say,” telling those who publicize and embellish the lives of real people: “Expose another private life, turn your back to face the knife. You could be the headline the next time that they lie.” 
These four songs I’ve just described are brilliant, and yet I would like to shine a light on the closing track in particular: “What Would You Do?” It is an utterly ruthless breakup song about a man coming to terms with the fact that his relationship has merely been one of convenience all along. In some of—if not the very best—songwriting on the EP, McLaughlin sings “give my best to all your friends if they were right again” and to “tell your father he will get the money I owe yet on second thoughts I wouldn’t bet.” The final nail in the coffin, so good it almost makes you wince, is: “and all these years you fooled yourself, the pictures on the shelf could have been of someone else.” Just devastating. Despite the cutting nature of “What Would You Do?” there is something gleeful and freeing in the brutally honest lyricism, sailing horns, and ringing guitars and drums. The sound of the song itself embodies the feeling of relief following the release from a dead-end job, a dead-end relationship, or words that have been trapped inside you for a long time. 
The whole EP is a release, really. My only complaint is that so few people are able to access it. I assume there are at least some other copies of the CD available in this country, so if you ever come across one, don’t hesitate to buy it. You will likely not have the opportunity again in your lifetime, and you do not want to miss out on this gem and become like one of the myriad of regretful characters it introduces. Trust me.