Archive Review: The Pogues’ Red Roses For Me / Rum, Sodomy & The Lash (2008)

Top o’ the morning’ to ya, matey! The Reverend K here to engage in discourse about the Pogues, as motley a crew of drunken, swaggering, fun-loving musicians as ever took up an instrument. No AOR aesthetics or middle-of-the-road mindlessness in these grooves, you betcha, ‘cause the Pogues perform a unique mix of traditional Irish and English folk melodies thrown in with their own appropriately antiquated originals. They present it with a spirit and vitality that out-rocks any half-o’-dozen heavy metal or hardcore bands you’d care to mention, and with the recent re-release of the band’s glorious first two albums, we citizens of the colonies can refamiliarize ourselves with the Pogues.

The Pogue’s Red Roses For Me

Red Roses For Me was originally released in the UK in 1984 by the legendary Stiff Records, and made it to these shores a year or so later courtesy of the long-lost Enigma imprint. One is tempted to call this a dance record, Red Roses For Me offering up a baker’s dozen of rollicking, never-miss-a-beat sea chants and stories that are guaranteed to get those lumbering toes of yours tingling and tapping in no time. The music is rich and hearty, with the basic guitar-bass-drums trio turned on its head by the Pogues, their trademark sound created with the addition of fiddles, accordion and concertinas (not to mention tin whistle).

Frontman Shane MacGowan’s vocals are rowdy and hoarse, shouted or croaked in the mix above the instrumentation and the lyrics…well, they mostly concern themselves with drinking, women, great battles at sea, more drinking and even more women. In other words, the sort of thing that all of us of Gaelic descent have hidden deep within our ancestral blood, to be brought out when the beat is right and the rhythm rocking. Among the highlights of Red Roses For Me are “The Battle of Brisbane,” “Streams of Whiskey” and the wonderful “Down In the Ground Where the Dead Men Go.” This Rhino reissue adds six good “bonus” tracks, including “Whiskey You’re the Devil” and “The Wild Rover.” A sixteen-page booklet includes a lot of pics and extensive liner notes, tho’ they fail to mention where any of the bonus tracks come from.

The Pogues’ Rum, Sodomy & The Lash

If Red Roses For Me was dismissed by many at the time of its release as a mere Celtic folk novelty, then Rum, Sodomy & The Lash – produced by Elvis Costello and released in 1985 – is a steely-edged saber, an aural cannonball waxing your cranium. Under Costello’s strong hand, the music on this sophomore effort is richer and brighter than on the band’s debut, MacGowan’s vocals cruder though more intelligible, and the lyrics wordier and more fanciful. The result of the pairing of the Pogues and Costello is a bone-rattling, senses-shaking, hell-raising record album that has easily withstood the test of time based, as it is, on timeless traditional music and raw punk attitude.

The pace varies a bit on Rum, Sodomy & The Lash, Costello mixing the faster-moving pieces in between several coarse ballads. The spirit and the verve exhibited on the Pogues’ first album can be found here in abundance, albeit tempered with a slight maturity. Tunes like “The Old Main Drag” and “Jesse James” are rowdy fun while instrumental cuts like “Wild Cats of Kilkenny” are every bit as energetic and out-of-control as the rollicking lyrical tunes. The result is an inspired, well-balanced mix of sober reflection and drunken lunacy. Of course, the finest anti-war song every written, the traditional “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” is provided a weary reading by MacGowan, which serves to only strengthen its powerful sorrow. The Rhino reissue includes another batch of fine liner notes, song lyrics, and six cool “bonus” tracks, including “A Pistol For Paddy Garcia” and “Body of An American.”

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

Picture in your mind a weather-beaten old ship, its sun-discolored sails lowered onto its salty, wooden deck, anchored in Galway or Cork. Its pirate crew holds forth in the local tavern, guzzling rum and whiskey and, late in the drunken evening, they break into a rambling, lusty song of life on the sea, or the lassie that they left far behind. That’s the sound and spirit of these first two albums from the Pogues. The band’s immense legacy has long since been writ large in the big book of rock ‘n’ roll, and their long musical shadow has influenced everybody from Billy Bragg and Flogging Molly to the Dropkick Murphys and the Tossers. To many – this humble scribe included – the Pogues remain the Emerald Isle’s best musical import, and any that would disagree can “pogue mahone.” (Rhino Records)

Review originally published by Blurt magazine, 2008