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Bulldog · 05-04-2009, 03:38 PM

3. The Pogues - If I Should Fall From Grace With God (1988)

1. If I Should Fall from Grace with God
2. Turkish Song of the Damned
3. Bottle of Smoke
4. Fairytale of New York
5. Metropolis
6. Thousands Are Sailing
7. South Australia
8. Fiesta
9. The Recruiting Sergeant/The Rocky Road to Dublin/The Galway Races
10. Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six
11. Lullaby of London
12. Sit Down by the Fire
13. The Broad Majestic Shannon
14. Worms

Behind curtain number 3 is an album I love for almost the exact opposite reasons to Talk Talk's Laughing Stock. To put this into a little bit of context, by 1987 the Pogues had something of a cult following in the UK, basically meaning that for all the critical acclaim their radical combination of Irish folk with the energy of punk rock had garnered, they lacked the commercial success to mirror it. Although the magnificent A Pair Of Brown Eyes single had been their first top 100-breaching single, even hiring a certain Elvis Costello to produce their previous LP release, Rum Sodomy and the Lash, hadn't seen much chart action. So, three years and a line-up change later (which saw bassist Cait O'Riordan run off to marry Elvis Costello to be replaced by Darryl Hunt, along with the hiring of multi-instrumentalist Terry Woods), the Pogues took to studio again with a few new ideas. Thankfully, dying their hair purple and turning up the echo on the drums wasn't among them. Though the Irish folk/punk crossover provides us with the centre of this album, a few new influences from areas such as Spanish folk, Middle Eastern folk and even jazz found their way into the songs. Combined with some of the finest melodies I've ever heard and vocalist Shane MacGowan's beautiful poetry, this results in probably my most listened-to album of the last few months and of the very best (and, again, more overlooked) classics of music.

Fittingly for such a bilious and uptempo album the title track, If I Should Fall From Grace With God starts things with a bang. Clocking at a fairly brief 2:20, it's basically what makes a good Pogues song in a nutshell - Darryl Hunt's lightning-quick yet repetitive drumbeat giving the song its energy, Spider Stacy's tin whistle and James Fearnley's accordion giving it that giddy, rousing kind of melody, and Shane MacGowan singing some imagery-full lyrics in his typically raucous, atonal style.

Turkish Song Of the Damned takes the Celtic folk-isms of the title track before it, injects a few Middle Eastern flavours into it and makes a darker and endlessly fascinating result. On the back of a truly infectious melody and terrific lyric about someone who came "old friend from Hell tonight - across the rotting sea - where the nails of the cross - or the blood of Christ - can bring you help this eve" and another great ensemble performance from the rest of the band comes one of the Pogues' very finest. The final 60 seconds of the song are absolute genius too. Bottle Of Smoke, on the other hand, is a lot more in keeping with the Pogues' older material, in that it's a hyped-up, frenetic take on Celtic folk. It's a furiously uptempo, sleazy piss-up of a song - absolute class in other words.

Coming hot on its heels in the dreamy duet with the late, great Kirsty MacColl and a song I'm sure we've all heard in one way or another, being the Pogues' biggest hit and probably the best Christmas song of all time. Fairytale Of New York is, though over-exposed in relation to the album that spawned it, a timeless classic, being a triumph of composition (given the wonderful tempo change half-way through) and being rather adventurous lyrically for a Christmas single, concerning how, in a nutshell and despite popular belief, there are actually more divorces and suicides around Christmastime than at any other point of the year. It's all very ironic really, and another fantastic song to go with it. Also, at least in the first half, it's the first ballad that the Pogues had written, which is one way in which this album signals a change in their musical direction. Another way it does this is, with tracks like the intriguing cross between jazz and folk of all things that is Metropolis, that it features solely instrumental tracks for the first time on any Pogues record. Given the lads' fantastic musical abilities and their subsequent strengths as a unit (which are here for all to see throughout the whole album), this comes as a bonus rather than an obstruction to the flow of the record.

Over the next four tracks is a sequence of probably the best, giddiest drinking songs money (or an extensive hard-drive) can buy, being a set of magnificent, anthemic and melodic songs. The first of these is Thousands Are Sailing, something of a sea shanty with its lyric revolving around the Irish immigration to the US of A and boasting enough of an infectious melody, memorable chorus and spot-on musicianship to make it truly efficient. Even Shane MacGowan's singing sounds good in this context. To follow it up is the traditional sea shanty South Australia. Sung by Spider Stacy, this frenzied rendition is yet another absolute gem which keeps the tempo of the album at that its hyped and oh-so-effective level. The pace is carried over nicely to the frenzied, jazz-influenced Fiesta. It's a bouncy, fun, brass-led, dizzy knees-up of a song, another terrific tune, and such sentiments are again carried over to the following song which, in this case, is the Recruiting Sergeant/the Rocky Road To Dublin/The Galway Races. Well, almost. The first segment of the medley is the deeply affecting the Recruiting Sergeant which tells the story of conscription in Ireland during World War 1 to a slowly rolling, fittingly military drumbeat, after which the instrumental Rocky Road To Dublin acts as a segue between it and the energetic re-reading of the Galway Races. Complete with its catchy hooks, raucous choruses and yarn-spinning lyrics, it puts the lid on the more frantic part of the album.

From there the mood takes a turn towards the more solemn, as the title of the next (non-traditional) medley, Streets Of Sorrow/Birmingham Six, the first part of which is the gentle, deeply emotional acoustic ballad sung by Terry Woods, as he laments the chaos of the apartheid in Belfast at the time before MacGowan comes in with the second half of the medley, where the tempo picks up slightly as he tells us of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four - two groups of Irishmen imprisoned on terrorist charges and tortured by police officers. It's the first real hint of any anger or political motivation in the Pogues' back-catalogue, and is all the more thought-provoking and effective for it. It is though the only such song on the album, with the following Lullaby Of London being an absolutely beautiful and romantic folk ballad. The melody from the accordion and the tin whistle, the somewhat minimalist approach from the rest of the band and the gorgeous, typically image-laden MacGowan lyrics all fit together perfectly to form a sheer masterpiece of a song.

With Sit Down By the Fire the pace is turned up a few notches again as we're given a kind of sister-song to Bottle Of Smoke, in that it's a short, sharp Celtic folk number with a punk slant on the whole thing, and turns out to be just as memorable and infectious. The Broad Majestic Shannon is again more along the lines of the Pogues' earlier works, being yet another wonderfully played and thought-out, kind of gently rolling romantic ballad. To put the lid on the album is the minute-long traditional Worms, which simply features two bass chords of the accordion over a fairly simplistic and whimsical lyric. It probably stands as the sole weak point on the album, being a bit of a Her Majesty-type anti-climax.

Despite this though, as the above blabbering review may suggest, this album definitely represents the Pogues at their absolute best, and that absolute best for those who don't know is the ability to produce some of the best melodies of all time and back them up with MacGowan's brilliant lyrics and terrific performances from the rest of one of the most capable groups of musicians ever. I think so anyway. Although there are at least three more Pogues albums worth a go, they'd never be quite as down-to-earth and consistent as they are here. It's also, to me, the best Celtic punk album of all time - although there are plenty of great Pogues-following bands out there today, none of them have quite managed to make this level of artistic greatness. One of my most listened to albums and deservedly so.

Bloody hell, that took longer than I expected...

05-04-2009, 03:38 PM	#216 (permalink)
Bulldog why bother? Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: UK Posts: 4,840	3. The Pogues - If I Should Fall From Grace With God (1988) 1. If I Should Fall from Grace with God 2. Turkish Song of the Damned 3. Bottle of Smoke 4. Fairytale of New York 5. Metropolis 6. Thousands Are Sailing 7. South Australia 8. Fiesta 9. The Recruiting Sergeant/The Rocky Road to Dublin/The Galway Races 10. Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six 11. Lullaby of London 12. Sit Down by the Fire 13. The Broad Majestic Shannon 14. Worms Behind curtain number 3 is an album I love for almost the exact opposite reasons to Talk Talk's Laughing Stock. To put this into a little bit of context, by 1987 the Pogues had something of a cult following in the UK, basically meaning that for all the critical acclaim their radical combination of Irish folk with the energy of punk rock had garnered, they lacked the commercial success to mirror it. Although the magnificent A Pair Of Brown Eyes single had been their first top 100-breaching single, even hiring a certain Elvis Costello to produce their previous LP release, Rum Sodomy and the Lash, hadn't seen much chart action. So, three years and a line-up change later (which saw bassist Cait O'Riordan run off to marry Elvis Costello to be replaced by Darryl Hunt, along with the hiring of multi-instrumentalist Terry Woods), the Pogues took to studio again with a few new ideas. Thankfully, dying their hair purple and turning up the echo on the drums wasn't among them. Though the Irish folk/punk crossover provides us with the centre of this album, a few new influences from areas such as Spanish folk, Middle Eastern folk and even jazz found their way into the songs. Combined with some of the finest melodies I've ever heard and vocalist Shane MacGowan's beautiful poetry, this results in probably my most listened-to album of the last few months and of the very best (and, again, more overlooked) classics of music. Fittingly for such a bilious and uptempo album the title track, If I Should Fall From Grace With God starts things with a bang. Clocking at a fairly brief 2:20, it's basically what makes a good Pogues song in a nutshell - Darryl Hunt's lightning-quick yet repetitive drumbeat giving the song its energy, Spider Stacy's tin whistle and James Fearnley's accordion giving it that giddy, rousing kind of melody, and Shane MacGowan singing some imagery-full lyrics in his typically raucous, atonal style. *Turkish Song Of the Damned* takes the Celtic folk-isms of the title track before it, injects a few Middle Eastern flavours into it and makes a darker and endlessly fascinating result. On the back of a truly infectious melody and terrific lyric about someone who came "old friend from Hell tonight - across the rotting sea - where the nails of the cross - or the blood of Christ - can bring you help this eve" and another great ensemble performance from the rest of the band comes one of the Pogues' very finest. The final 60 seconds of the song are absolute genius too. *Bottle Of Smoke, on the other hand, is a lot more in keeping with the Pogues' older material, in that it's a hyped-up, frenetic take on Celtic folk. It's a furiously uptempo, sleazy piss-up of a song - absolute class in other words. Coming hot on its heels in the dreamy duet with the late, great Kirsty MacColl and a song I'm sure we've all heard in one way or another, being the Pogues' biggest hit and probably the best Christmas song of all time. Fairytale Of New York* is, though over-exposed in relation to the album that spawned it, a timeless classic, being a triumph of composition (given the wonderful tempo change half-way through) and being rather adventurous lyrically for a Christmas single, concerning how, in a nutshell and despite popular belief, there are actually more divorces and suicides around Christmastime than at any other point of the year. It's all very ironic really, and another fantastic song to go with it. Also, at least in the first half, it's the first ballad that the Pogues had written, which is one way in which this album signals a change in their musical direction. Another way it does this is, with tracks like the intriguing cross between jazz and folk of all things that is Metropolis, that it features solely instrumental tracks for the first time on any Pogues record. Given the lads' fantastic musical abilities and their subsequent strengths as a unit (which are here for all to see throughout the whole album), this comes as a bonus rather than an obstruction to the flow of the record. Over the next four tracks is a sequence of probably the best, giddiest drinking songs money (or an extensive hard-drive) can buy, being a set of magnificent, anthemic and melodic songs. The first of these is *Thousands Are Sailing, something of a sea shanty with its lyric revolving around the Irish immigration to the US of A and boasting enough of an infectious melody, memorable chorus and spot-on musicianship to make it truly efficient. Even Shane MacGowan's singing sounds good in this context. To follow it up is the traditional sea shanty South Australia. Sung by Spider Stacy, this frenzied rendition is yet another absolute gem which keeps the tempo of the album at that its hyped and oh-so-effective level. The pace is carried over nicely to the frenzied, jazz-influenced Fiesta. It's a bouncy, fun, brass-led, dizzy knees-up of a song, another terrific tune, and such sentiments are again carried over to the following song which, in this case, is the Recruiting Sergeant/the Rocky Road To Dublin/The Galway Races. Well, almost. The first segment of the medley is the deeply affecting the Recruiting Sergeant* which tells the story of conscription in Ireland during World War 1 to a slowly rolling, fittingly military drumbeat, after which the instrumental Rocky Road To Dublin acts as a segue between it and the energetic re-reading of the Galway Races. Complete with its catchy hooks, raucous choruses and yarn-spinning lyrics, it puts the lid on the more frantic part of the album. From there the mood takes a turn towards the more solemn, as the title of the next (non-traditional) medley, *Streets Of Sorrow/Birmingham Six, the first part of which is the gentle, deeply emotional acoustic ballad sung by Terry Woods, as he laments the chaos of the apartheid in Belfast at the time before MacGowan comes in with the second half of the medley, where the tempo picks up slightly as he tells us of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four - two groups of Irishmen imprisoned on terrorist charges and tortured by police officers. It's the first real hint of any anger or political motivation in the Pogues' back-catalogue, and is all the more thought-provoking and effective for it. It is though the only such song on the album, with the following Lullaby Of London* being an absolutely beautiful and romantic folk ballad. The melody from the accordion and the tin whistle, the somewhat minimalist approach from the rest of the band and the gorgeous, typically image-laden MacGowan lyrics all fit together perfectly to form a sheer masterpiece of a song. With Sit Down By the Fire the pace is turned up a few notches again as we're given a kind of sister-song to Bottle Of Smoke, in that it's a short, sharp Celtic folk number with a punk slant on the whole thing, and turns out to be just as memorable and infectious. The Broad Majestic Shannon is again more along the lines of the Pogues' earlier works, being yet another wonderfully played and thought-out, kind of gently rolling romantic ballad. To put the lid on the album is the minute-long traditional *Worms, which simply features two bass chords of the accordion over a fairly simplistic and whimsical lyric. It probably stands as the sole weak point on the album, being a bit of a Her Majesty-type anti-climax. Despite this though, as the above blabbering review may suggest, this album definitely represents the Pogues at their absolute best, and that absolute best for those who don't know is the ability to produce some of the best melodies of all time and back them up with MacGowan's brilliant lyrics and terrific performances from the rest of one of the most capable groups of musicians ever. I think so anyway. Although there are at least three more Pogues albums worth a go, they'd never be quite as down-to-earth and* consistent as they are here. It's also, to me, the best Celtic punk album of all time - although there are plenty of great Pogues-following bands out there today, none of them have quite managed to make this level of artistic greatness. One of my most listened to albums and deservedly so. Bloody hell, that took longer than I expected... Last edited by Bulldog; 05-04-2009 at 03:44 PM.