One of the occupational hazards of being a music critic for an Irish newspaper is the ear splitting banality one has to suffer through when a major Celtic rock outfit decides to get in touch with "their roots" with a trad song.

For one thing, the song selection could not be more unimaginative. Do you have any idea how many versions of "Fields of Athenry" and "Rocky Road to Dublin" I've amassed on my iPod in the 10 years I've written for the Irish Voice?

If that doesn't kill the project, the paint-by-numbers arrangements will. At the risk of an uprising in the letters to the editor page, my viewpoint is that the trad music we all know and love in the hands of modern Celtic rock stars is reduced to album filler when the creativity runs dry in the recording studio.

After reading those two paragraphs, you can imagine the eye rolling sense of dread that went on in my mind when the traditional Irish collection called With All Due Respect, the new CD from the Young Dubliners, landed in the mailbag. I am a huge Dubs fan, making this decision on their part all the more crushing.

"This whole project was a risk for all the reasons you just stated," enthuses head Dub Keith Roberts when I share my bias to him.

"This was the one thing we swore we'd never do, which is a risk in and of itself. Then you worry about what people might think when you put out a trad album. 'Yerra, that Keith is out of ideas,' or 'He's just trying to come up with something to sell at gigs.' That's probably the one worry I had about putting this out."

All of that worry went to waste. In between swallowing heaping helpings of humble pie I am here to announce that With All Due Respect is easily the greatest traditional CD to come down the pike since I began slinging ink with this fine paper.

The melodies you know and love echo and roar so loud that they take your breath away. The cymbals crash with all the urgency of a bottle breaking on the side of the bar before a brawl.

"I'll Tell Me Ma" has a sweet Appalachian harmonica running through it, while "Weila Waila" is a lusty pub sing-along. "McAlpine's Fusiliers" stomps through the speakers.

This new album showcases the perfect marriage of a band with something to prove, and production that is adept at bringing out the band's strengths.

The risk that Roberts discusses is notched up on the Pogues tunes that the Young Dubliners cover. Shane MacGowan is such an ubiquitous presence in the Celtic rock genre, and his songs are so synonymous with his personality that cover versions of his work almost always come off as a pale imitation.

In the hands of Roberts, though, the songs are reimagined without a trace of nostalgia into contemporary rockers perfectly at home on today's alternative rock radio.

"If I should fall from grace with God where no doctor can relieve me/if I'm buried 'neath the sod but the angels won't receive me/let me go boys, let me go down in the mud/where the rivers all run dry," he bellows on "If I Should Fall From Grace With God."

On both this track and "A Pair of Brown Eyes," Roberts adds nuances to the brilliant MacGowan poetry that might have been lost in the boozy delivery of the songs' author.

No self-respecting fan of Celtic rock should be without With All Due Respect, and if you're an Irish bar owner and this CD is not on your jukebox, you disgrace our race!

I had a rollicking chat with Roberts about taking on the trad. Here's how it went.

Why a trad CD now?

We earned our reputation as songwriters. We set out to be unique. This album is, in a way, doing something we swore we would never do. But we thought if we did earn our take, let's take a chance and dare improve on the original. We had the responsibility to both do it justice, yet live in it and give it new life.

To me, I think you finally nailed it....this is what the Young Dubliners sounds like live, and I know you've tried to catch that lightning in the bottle for some time.

We've always tried to make albums that live up to our live show. That seems to be a mystical level that we always try to rise to.

We did the recording, mix, and mastering in 17 days. We made the decision to do the album last November and then we decided if we were to do it, you have to have it out by St. Patrick's Day!

I think that lack of pause helped us. We didn't have the time to over think this in any way. We didn't over-produce it. There were no harps. We didn't give Eric, our piper, any prep time. Give us a bit of a whistle and let's nail it!

The production on this CD really knocked me out. It had a big 1980s drum sound that really redefined the songs to me.

Tim and the Young Dubliners are a great team. I finally found someone that I can trust with our sound. I can spend my time getting the songs right and he worries about the sound. It's a huge burden lifted off of us.

I think my favorite song on the album was "Tell Me Ma." I love the mountain vibe you give it with the harmonica.

I love "Tell Me Ma." I grew up only knowing the first verse. As the song goes on it reveals this great wit. It's very frisky, which is significant based on the time that it was first written. It talks about going with the fella that you know is going to be bad for you. They lyrics really drew me in.

How did you do decide which Pogues songs to cover? I must say I love what you did with them.

Thanks! Well, we wanted to do our own thing with these songs. There are plenty of people who cover Pogues songs and put on the fake Shane accents, and that was something that we just weren't interested in.

There were a lot of discussions among the band. We picked out the Best of the Pogues and played around with some of the songs. "If I Should Fall From Grace With God" is just an amazing song with great turnarounds. "A Pair of Brown Eyes" talks about the horrors of war and it is beautiful.

For me, I did some of these covers for one reason - to get Mike Scott (Waterboys) and Shane some royalty checks in appreciation of all the great music they dropped into my life. Not sure if that was even important to a guy like Mike Scott, but it was pretty important for me.

Every Irish band seems to have a famous Pogues story. What's yours?

Never spoke to Shane that he would remember, though we did speak. He did pretty much keep to himself. I think I saw him take a leak upside the tour bus once.

But we all know what a living legend he is. There's this sad brilliance to the way he lives his life. He is living a rebel's life.

(Young Dubliners' "With All Due Respect" is available on 429 Records, through iTunes and record shops. For more information log onto www.YoungDubliners. com.)