It’s been a while since I wrote about The Pogues, a pleasant
\nlittle Irish band that I got into thanks to a teacher buddy of mine
\nin high school. (I often wonder how Buzz is doing these days. If
\nanyone knows Buzz Hunter in Illinois, please drop me a line.) In
\n1989, while I was in college radio, I was fortunate enough to get
\nthe chance to play their then-new release
\nPeace And Love<\/i> for an audience of about – oh, twelve people
\neach week. (Hey, may as well pull no punches about it.)<\/p>\n
In this album, you can hear the steady decline that lead
\nsinger\/resident alcoholic Shane MacGowan was involved in, and the
\nbalance of power in the band shifting. (The liner notes don’t tell
\nmuch about instrumentation and vocals except for band members’
\nnames, so sorry if this seems a tad deficient.)<\/p>\n
\nPeace And Love<\/i> showed a band that was interested in
\nexpanding the definitions of what Irish music was. You can hear
\nthis in the jazz-influenced opener “Gridlock,” which shows off the
\npowerful instrumental skills of this band. Frankly, this makes
\nthing much more interesting than if The Pogues had stuck to doing
\nnothing but jigs; the variety adds more flavor to the album and
\nkeeps things interesting.<\/p>\n
MacGowan still has a solid influence on this album, though more
\nand more you find yourself needing the lyric sheet to understand
\njust what he was singing. Happily slurring his way through songs
\nlike “London You’re A Lady” and “USA”, he still demonstrates just
\nhow important he is to The Pogues. Songs like “Down All The Days”
\nand “Night Train To Lorca,” a song I had forgotten how much I
\nenjoyed until I pulled this tape out of the Pierce Archives
\nrecently, are fine examples of how attitude can overcome diction in
\na vocal.<\/p>\n
This is not to say that the non-MacGowan-sung tracks off
\nPeace And Love<\/i> are bad by any means. “Blue Heaven” offered a
\nglimpse into the direction the band would take after MacGowan’s
\nsacking on
\nWaiting For Herb<\/i>, while more traditional numbers like “Misty
\nMorning, Albert Bridge” show how enjoyable Irish music can actually
\nbe.<\/p>\n
The second half of
\nPeace And Love<\/i> isn’t quite as strong as the first, though
\nsongs like “Lorelei” and “Boat Train” are hardly wastes in any
\nsense. But, in a sense, you could hear things starting to unravel a
\nlittle bit on this portion of the album.<\/p>\n
Once again, Steve Lillywhite’s production work is just as
\nimportant to The Pogues as the tin whistle or a bottle of good
\nwhiskey; his mastery of their sound helps to bring out the pure joy
\nin their music that much more.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nPeace And Love<\/i> is presently only available as an import, but
\nis definitely worth spending the extra few dollars for (at least
\nuntil it sees the light of day in America again). It might have
\nbeen the last solid performance MacGowan gave with the band, and it
\nmight not have been as strong as their predecessor
\nIf I Should Fall From Grace With God<\/i>, but it was still a
\nsolid follow-up, and remains a pleasing album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5670],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-39334","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-pogues","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39334"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}