As a former citizen of the punk-tinged fringe of the Celtic music world, I’ve come to regard this time of year as simultaneously bountiful and terrifying.

Irish music abounds. Bands like The Big Bad Bollocks and the Yankcelt Band who haven’t been seen since the previous March struggle out of piles of mothballs to embrace the glories of another round St. Patrick’s Day revelry. Groups who are legitimately Irish pop up with the persistence of clover in June. Suddenly it’s hard to turn anywhere without finding a fiddler sawing out “The Kesh Jig” or someone with the requisite twinkling eyes belting out a whiskey-soaked rendition of, God help us, “Danny Boy.”

That’s the good news.

What makes the bad news terrifying is that it comes inextricably wound up with that pleasant bounty of Irish sounds. Venture out to hear a few bars of “The Foggy Dew” and shed a tear for black ’47, and things can go awry. For starters, if God had meant beer to be green, he wouldn’t have invented Arthur Guinness. I don’t know what that verdant swill is, but you shouldn’t touch it. And then there’s that guy—and his million clones—who, every year about this time, thinks it’s deeply clever to adopt what he doesn’t know is a mangled Cork lilt and bring up Lucky Charms.

Too much of that comedy gold could negate even The Clancy Brothers, W.B. Yeats and blind harpist Toirdhealbhach O’Cearbhallain taking the stage for a rousing chorus of “The Wearin’ of the Green.”

And don’t even get me started on those pyrotechnic cartoons that ruin the good name of Ireland these days, stage shows like Celtic Thunder, Celtic Woman, and whatever that moonbat from Riverdance is up to now.

This year, I’m thanking the gods for a fine turn-up that’s overshadowing all the nonsense. The Bay State has, thanks to its large population of Irish-Americans, a well-deserved reputation as a westerly outpost of Erin. In the heart of Boston Irishness, you’ll often find Quincy band the Dropkick Murphys. They’ve been around since the late ’90s, but this year brings a new CD called Going Out in Style that marks a renewed freshness in their highly specialized Celt-punk part of the world.

When that genre works, there’s little finer—to hear the Pogues tear through “The Sickbed of Cuchuliann” in the band’s heyday could melt synapses with a pure ecstasy not even a heavy dose of Charlie Sheen provides. But Celtic punk is largely hobbled by the clear fact that Pogues songwriter and singer Shane MacGowan set the standard of infectious tunes, snarling energy and musical inebriation so high that no one since has come close to his Olympus.

The Dropkick Murphys don’t manage that trick either, but they’ve stuck with a formula that offers its own pleasures, and delivers the goods with a handy knack for nodding to Irishness without feeling the need to pretend they’re anything but Boston-bred. In that way, they’ve fostered a sense of authenticity that few American “Irish” bands equal. Where The Pogues offered acoustic instrumentation and tipsy vocals, The Murphys deliver guitar overdriven to ear-bleeding excess, vocals that are as much shouted as sung, and a sufficient dose of traditional instrumentation like banjo, pipes and fiddle.

Many of the Murphys’ earlier efforts seemed like retreads, material that, without its layer of distortion, would only be semi-successful, wannabe Pogues songs. The band’s ubiquitous hit “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” that ended up on the Departed soundtrack may well mark the moment when that changed.

There are still a few tunes on Going Out in Style that are lackluster, but who’s counting when the majority of the album reveals a band that’s fully inhabited its sound and foregone the urge to imitate? This is a truly engaging set of songs.

The trappings are mostly Massachusetts—references to Fenway and Boston are omnipresent—and the confident breaks from saturated guitar to sparse, banjo-driven melody feel dead-on, unforced. It’s easy to get caught up in the spirit of the thing, and maybe that’s the key: the spirit of the Dropkick Murphys is pro-union, pro-working class, and completely American. The band’s Irish aesthetic seems to exist in an easy equilibrium with that American-ness; the Murphys don’t sound like they’re grasping to be something they’re not. Rather, they are finding what is for them the heart of being American with a name from across the pond.

And something tells me that guy with the Lucky Charms accent risks a boot in the face if he goes near a Dropkick Murphys show. Not that I’ll mind.