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	RICK BARTON AND THE SHADOW BLASTERS Anthems at the Abbey

There was a time in the ’90s when Rick Barton would hang out in local clubs, like anyone else from a great Boston band (in his case, the Outlets) who’d been defunct for a decade. Back then, Barton would tell anyone who’d listen about a new band of his who were fusing Irish music with punk rock. Sure, we cynics figured, like Boston really needs that. As it turned out, Dropkick Murphys did pretty well for themselves

Singer/songwriter/guitarist Barton left the Murphys in 2000, around the time they stopped writing songs about blowing up Lansdowne Street and started writing songs about baseball. Since then, he’s been both prolific and low-key. He’s recorded six new CDs of material, but very little of it has seen even minor release. And he’s maintained a band, the Shadow Blasters (with former Amazing Crowns guitarist Greg Burgess and a couple of roots-rock vets from the Swinging Steaks), though they last played at the Somerville Theatre with Cheap Trick two years ago.

Still looking blond and boyish after a quarter-century in local rock, Barton brought the band to the Abbey Lounge last Friday and unveiled his current sound: anthem rock, writ large. There was no Irish influence whatsoever, but his years in the Murphys taught him to build to big choruses, and then bigger ones. The opening "Give Me a Sign" pulled the U2/Mellencamp trick of starting acoustically before amping up to a full-throttle finish, and the set closed with a desperate rocker, "Don’t Leave Me Now." There was a tinge of "Free Bird" in the slide-guitar-driven "Master Plan." And before "Fly," he announced that it was "not that U2 song." Indeed, it was even more grandiose than Bono’s typical fare, with lyrics that describe the existential crisis of squashing a bug and a chorus borrowed from Neil Young ("Don’t be denied") thrown in for good measure.

Given the band’s mainstream tendencies, the Shadow Blasters may be the most un-Abbey band ever to play the garage-punk-oriented venue. Not everyone stuck around for the whole set. But it’s quality stuff, with at least half a dozen hit-sounding tracks. And it’s not hard to imagine Barton proving the cynics wrong once again.

It would have been hard to find less appropriate openers than a garage band wearing gorilla masks. But New Hampshire’s Thee Monkey Butlers did gonzoid fuzztone rock in the Coffin Lids vein, using an antique microphone to emphasize their primitive sound. They also won the prize for the night’s most tasteless yet inevitable stage patter: "Sorry we’re slow tonight, but they just pulled out our feeding tube."