A quick lesson in modern Irish rock: In the ’80s, the Pogues imbued Irish music with the spirit of punk, but not the literal speed and venom of punk. Nineties acts like Flogging Molly and the Dropkick Murphys took the sound one step farther, playing straight-ahead punk with Celtic motifs. Founded after the Pogues but slightly before the ’90s Irish-punk boom, Chicago’s The Tossers fall somewhere between those two schools, playing music that’s too punk for your parents to enjoy, but too traditionally Celtic to mosh along with. It’s a happy middle ground, and the Tossers deliver plenty of amped-up drinking anthems for audiences to sing along with, without falling victim to some of the cartoonish clichés some of their punkier peers do.
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