Having admittedly only a mildly knowledgeable feel for his Pogues work, there still doesn't seem to be too much distance between Shane's past and present configurations; it's like he just switched to a different gang. There's still the beer drenched yowl, the attractive grin, and the pub-rock flavourings, but there's also a bare nakedness to Mac's sentiments that seems to hover over the words herein. The lyrics beckon and garner an intimacy that brings the listener much closer to the fiddle whistles and Celtic soused tones of The Snake.
A fair amount of non-Irish Americans probably only saunter close to this type of sound once a year (and only then with the aid of a lot of "green" beer), but for those who dabble more often than just every St. Patrick's Day this probably holds up considerably. Even if you think him nothing more than a red-nosed lout, which he recently insisted in the pages of Rolling Stone that he isn't anything of the sort, there's still an audible and impassioned honesty to his whiskey broken caroling that makes you buy into it all.
On tunes like "The Song With No Name" you can hear the battered paramour's spirit as it staggers along in mournful regret for his lost love. And there's also MacGowan's spouting off his advocacy of traditional worship in "The Church of The Holy Spook," where he shouts aloud in brisk, rocking 4/4 time about "the sacred blood of the Holy Ghost" boiling in his veins. At the very least, this all doesn't paint itself as posturing on the surface.
And even if you wind up disinterested or doubting the sincerity in MacGowan's raspy rant, there's still fistfuls of good playing about. "Victoria" is a frills free rocker that goes down well again and again, as does the aforementioned "Spook." Sinead drops in on "Haunted" to join Shane in a Springsteen-like rock ballad that nicks a bit of The Who's Baba O'Reilly along the way. But even that contrary pairing of voices is framed well enough in MacGowan's pop smart melodies that it works just fine.
For the indoctrinated The Snake probably serves faithfully and for the yet to be indoctrinated it's probably a sound entry point. Personally looking to the live version for an even bigger kick.
