Published on Aug 31, 1998
It’s been a while since I wrote about The Pogues, a pleasant
little Irish band that I got into thanks to a teacher buddy of mine
in high school. (I often wonder how Buzz is doing these days. If
anyone knows Buzz Hunter in Illinois, please drop me a line.) In
1989, while I was in college radio, I was fortunate enough to get
the chance to play their then-new release
Peace And Love for an audience of about – oh, twelve people
each week. (Hey, may as well pull no punches about it.)
In this album, you can hear the steady decline that lead
singer/resident alcoholic Shane MacGowan was involved in, and the
balance of power in the band shifting. (The liner notes don’t tell
much about instrumentation and vocals except for band members’
names, so sorry if this seems a tad deficient.)
Peace And Love showed a band that was interested in
expanding the definitions of what Irish music was. You can hear
this in the jazz-influenced opener “Gridlock,” which shows off the
powerful instrumental skills of this band. Frankly, this makes
thing much more interesting than if The Pogues had stuck to doing
nothing but jigs; the variety adds more flavor to the album and
keeps things interesting.
MacGowan still has a solid influence on this album, though more
and more you find yourself needing the lyric sheet to understand
just what he was singing. Happily slurring his way through songs
like “London You’re A Lady” and “USA”, he still demonstrates just
how important he is to The Pogues. Songs like “Down All The Days”
and “Night Train To Lorca,” a song I had forgotten how much I
enjoyed until I pulled this tape out of the Pierce Archives
recently, are fine examples of how attitude can overcome diction in
a vocal.
This is not to say that the non-MacGowan-sung tracks off
Peace And Love are bad by any means. “Blue Heaven” offered a
glimpse into the direction the band would take after MacGowan’s
sacking on
Waiting For Herb, while more traditional numbers like “Misty
Morning, Albert Bridge” show how enjoyable Irish music can actually
be.
The second half of
Peace And Love isn’t quite as strong as the first, though
songs like “Lorelei” and “Boat Train” are hardly wastes in any
sense. But, in a sense, you could hear things starting to unravel a
little bit on this portion of the album.
Once again, Steve Lillywhite’s production work is just as
important to The Pogues as the tin whistle or a bottle of good
whiskey; his mastery of their sound helps to bring out the pure joy
in their music that much more.
Peace And Love is presently only available as an import, but
is definitely worth spending the extra few dollars for (at least
until it sees the light of day in America again). It might have
been the last solid performance MacGowan gave with the band, and it
might not have been as strong as their predecessor
If I Should Fall From Grace With God, but it was still a
solid follow-up, and remains a pleasing album.