From March 12-March 19, 2003 Pittsburgh City Paper, p. 59

Ceann na Caca
'Us Drunk Live'
SELF-RELEASED

The guys in Ceann na Caca can't really sing. Or play. And they are to folk music what House of Pain was to rap: Playing off Irish stereotypes, Pittsburgh stereotypes, and the place where the two intersect-it's all about yinz getting drunk with us. That being said, Ceann na Caca's new album, appropriately titled 'Us Drunk Live', is absolutely work picking up this St. Patty's season at one of the 1000 show the band has planned in the region. (Down from last year's 2000).

While it's not 'Live', I have no doubt that it's 'Us' and 'Drunk'. In at least most cases the audience chatter and applause is piped into the album afterwards-though convincingly so. Songs like "Cushie Butterfield" and "Black Velvet Band," which is done up to sound like it's performed at a bingo parlor, are just what little pubs up and down the East Coast will be chattering to and singing with for the next week or so. But everybody does "Rising of the Moon" and "Leaving of Liverpool"-as with the band's last release, the reason to listen to 'Us Drunk Live' are songs like "Paczak's," lamenting the South Side's greatest Irish-themed Polish bar and its partisan barkeep Art. Or "Christmas in South Oakland," praising the season when Atwood Street clears out for the holidays and the odd remaining students get drunk, laid, and drunk again for three weeks straight. Or "In North Oakland There's N Good Beer," an Irish-styled, Oakland-themed version of the classic polka, poking fun at those damned North-side frat boys.

Ceann na Caca is about as unwholesome as acoustic-guitar based Irish music gets, and for that the band deserves a raised glass and a 'slainte'-particularly for the absurd remix of "Ahrn at the Bar," the band's biggest "hit," known as "Ahrn 3000." Don't go playing this around some filddle-toting oldie from Ennis, but if you dyed your beer green and got loaded on Jameson's on March 7 because it was "close enough," you could do a hell of a lot worse than Ceann na Caca. (Justin Hopper)

Ceann na Caca plays from 3-7 p.m. Sat., March 15 at Bootlegger's in Oakland; 8 p.m. Sun, March 16, at the Rex Theater, South Side; and 9 p.m. Mon., March 17 at the Bloomflield Bridge Tavern, Bloomfield.