Larry Kirwan devotes himself to a strange mixture of Irish nationalism, American civil rights advocacy, and working-class infidelity on New York's Lower East Side. He sings with equal passion about 1920s Irish patriots and lovers' triangles, and when he loses his girlfriends to better-employed sanitation workers and dentists, he buries his misery in six-packs. It's a worldview of sorts, especially because Kirwan sees it in such heroic terms and because he adopts music that reinforces those terms: an earnest, if slightly self-mocking singer emotes over martial rhythms, traditional Celtic folk instruments, a horn section, and dabs of rock guitar.