by James Murphy Thu Feb 06, 2014 4:46 am
It's great that they used a show where MacGowan was sat in the audience. He seemed to find the band's rapid decline after they sacked him darkly hilarious.
I'll tell you one thing the band may have done wrong. They failed to adapt musically to Joe Strummer's voice at all, even a little bit. Throughout, the songs are banged through in their own universe, with no regard paid to their new singer's style. There's lovely interplay between the musicians, but it's as if Joe's been superimposed on the top of them. They developed this battle-hardened technique in the darkest days of Shane's tenure, training themselves to avert their eyes to the floor, play the songs, and if the vocalist is slurring out of time and forgetting words, well, what the fuck ever, we'll be out of here in ninety minutes.
It's probably a matter of lack of rehearsal too, I understand they pulled Joe in as a desperate last minute replacement and so he was forced to head a unit already on the march, with no opportunity to drop his own identity in there. It means that MacGowan's shadow is more present and noticable than it would have been if the potentially beautiful weird, possible meshing of Joe Strummer and the Pogues had organically met in some kind of middle ground. Joe has to perform in the hole where Shane would have been so mostly what we get is lack of Shane. I think this is one of the reasons why Hell's Ditch is my standout track of the release, the playing gives an organic opportunity for Strummer to show the sizable gifts that he could bring to the table. They sound like a band there.
"Singing's fucking stupid and completely, unsatisfyingly dissimilar to heroin." - What Shane seemed to be saying in his vocal performance on Hell's Ditch. Joe had no idea how to phrase Sayanora, though, that's a point to Shane.
They're great together on the Clash material. And when a Pogue steps on to the mic, you can feel a little more relaxation, as in Terry Woods' brilliant version of Young Ned. Terry's the real star of this album, his playing is consistently interesting, by the way. The band are like someone who had a dickhead for a spouse and are consistently pleasantly surprised to discover their new partner doesn't care if they chat to an attractive member of the opposite sex. They just may have had more chemistry with the dickhead.
It shows how uncaringly botched the execution of the behind the scenes stuff was that Sayanora is mislabelled as Summer In Siam.
It's great that they used a show where MacGowan was sat in the audience. He seemed to find the band's rapid decline after they sacked him darkly hilarious.
I'll tell you one thing the band may have done wrong. They failed to adapt musically to Joe Strummer's voice at all, even a little bit. Throughout, the songs are banged through in their own universe, with no regard paid to their new singer's style. There's lovely interplay between the musicians, but it's as if Joe's been superimposed on the top of them. They developed this battle-hardened technique in the darkest days of Shane's tenure, training themselves to avert their eyes to the floor, play the songs, and if the vocalist is slurring out of time and forgetting words, well, what the fuck ever, we'll be out of here in ninety minutes.
It's probably a matter of lack of rehearsal too, I understand they pulled Joe in as a desperate last minute replacement and so he was forced to head a unit already on the march, with no opportunity to drop his own identity in there. It means that MacGowan's shadow is more present and noticable than it would have been if the potentially beautiful weird, possible meshing of Joe Strummer and the Pogues had organically met in some kind of middle ground. Joe has to perform in the hole where Shane would have been so mostly what we get is lack of Shane. I think this is one of the reasons why Hell's Ditch is my standout track of the release, the playing gives an organic opportunity for Strummer to show the sizable gifts that he could bring to the table. They sound like a band there.
"Singing's fucking stupid and completely, unsatisfyingly dissimilar to heroin." - What Shane seemed to be saying in his vocal performance on Hell's Ditch. Joe had no idea how to phrase Sayanora, though, that's a point to Shane.
They're great together on the Clash material. And when a Pogue steps on to the mic, you can feel a little more relaxation, as in Terry Woods' brilliant version of Young Ned. Terry's the real star of this album, his playing is consistently interesting, by the way. The band are like someone who had a dickhead for a spouse and are consistently pleasantly surprised to discover their new partner doesn't care if they chat to an attractive member of the opposite sex. They just may have had more chemistry with the dickhead.
It shows how uncaringly botched the execution of the behind the scenes stuff was that Sayanora is mislabelled as Summer In Siam.
