The Departed (Kind of Gushy Review Here) movie soundtrack features a bunch of 60's rock: "Gimme Shelter" by the Stones and "Comfortably Numb" by Van Morrison. Good stuff, but nothing you didn't hear 1000's of times already and gave parts of the movie a rather dated sound.
But right in the heart of the action comes this amazing song - traditional Celtic instruments combined with hardcore punk guitar and roaring lyrics, like the bastard love-child of the Chiefians and Anti-Flag. It's an absolutly perfect a song for a bunch of Boston-Irish cops and Boston-Irish Mobsters to do epic violence to.
So I finally tracked the song down (Anything on the Internet) It's "I'm Shipping up to Boston" by The Dropkick Murphys. A great Village Voice story on the song and the band and the movie is here:
So it's weirdly thrilling to know that a legendary 63-year-old film director (or at least the music supervisor he hired) thought to include a song from these guys on the soundtrack of a movie that so perfectly reflects the corner of the world they represent. The Departed, after all, is a movie about Irish people doing violent shit in Boston, and the Dropkick Murphys are a band that sing about Irish people doing violent shit in Boston; it's a match made in heaven. Scorsese is better at picking the perfect song for his scenes than any other director working (fuck a Tarantino), but I'm still amazed that he managed to nail this one so completely. "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" also shows up earlier in the movie, as Leonardo DiCaprio does pushups in jail. And the movie wouldn't really suffer if the song played over every single scene, sort of like "Scarborough Fair" in The Graduate.
The song is playing on the band's Myspace Page.
No comments:
Post a Comment