Pub-Rock, Alternative Instincts

“Alive, alive ‘o,” indeed. This in-concert snapshot finds the hard-charging, unreservedly passionate Celtic-rock band from Los Angeles’ fair city singing from its cockles and showing its muscles. Led by two transplanted Dubliners, singers Keith Roberts and Paul O’Toole, the Young Dubliners alternate hearty pub-rock instincts (think Southside Johnny and Thin Lizzy, especially when Jeff Dellisanti switches from keyboards to wailing sax) with a dense, dark attack, keyed by guitarist Randy Woolford, that’s more akin to contemporary alterna-rock.

That edgy, glowering side of the Young Dubliners may have been the point of commonality that brought them together with producer Steve Albini, best known for his work with such alternative stalwarts as the Pixies and Nirvana. Albini recorded a show at the Belly Up in Solana Beach with cinema verite feeling--the performance has a rough, unvarnished, you-are-there immediacy that makes the album’s title more than just a point of information.

Only two songs are drawn from the band’s two previous studio albums. One is the hurtling “Follow Me Up to Carlow,” a traditional, centuries-old battle anthem that finds tromped-upon Celts getting their Irish up in eager anticipation of spilling English blood. Here, it serves not as a political statement but as an action-packed release for all the inward turmoil captured in the Young Dubliners’ original songs. Of those, “Man Upstairs” is an especially persuasive cry of existential despair and lost faith--far too gritty and forceful to smack of routine alt-rock angst. The other outside number, the Waterboys’ glowing “Fisherman’s Blues,” maintains the hopeful yearning for change captured in the original, while transposing it from gentle Celtic folk to tough Celtic pub-rock.

Tin whistles, mandolins and, especially, Mark Epting’s darting, raw-yet-sweet fiddle sallies provide an Irish accent that gives the Young Dubliners’ anything-but-folkish rock its traditional grounding and stylistic flavor.

The collection’s lone studio track, the lovelorn “Blink,’ shows that the primary songwriting team of Roberts and Woolford can cop Beatles-like chorus hooks with the best of them.

Roberts isn’t big on delicacy or nuance. His husky, get-it-off-your-chest singing even recalls Eddie Vedder on the opening song, “One and Only.” That’s a virtue in a fiery performance, but the Young Dubliners could benefit from a more subtle lyrical approach to occasionally counter the straight-ahead emotionalism of the singing.

Five of the eight tracks on “Alive, alive ‘o” are previously unreleased originals, and most are plain-spoken to a fault. The storytelling in “One and Only,” with its scenario of incestuous rape begetting violent self-defense, comes across too bluntly. The more sensitive and potentially sensational the theme, the more useful an oblique, shaded, metaphoric lyrical approach to make the telling seem insightful and surprising, rather than so much pushing of familiar hot-buttons of outrage and disgust. One model is Ben Folds Five’s evocative, lyrically subtle but emotionally trenchant rendering of an abortion’s aftermath in “Brick.” The Young Dubliners’ approach --”Her bedroom’s open wide/There’s nowhere she can hide”--turns “One and Only” into a horror show enacted by stick figures, not fully realized human beings.

* The Young Dubliners, Psychic Rain and the Day play tonight at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. 8 p.m. $13.50-$15.50. (714) 957-0600.