The Popes new album - Outlaw Heaven

[IrishRover]

OIutlaw Heaven album's boiund foir Aproil 09'.
lookoin' foirward to oit.

[RoddyRuddy]

OIutlaw Heaven album's boiund foir Aproil 09'.
lookoin' foirward to oit.

listen to it on line @;

http://www.sonicbids.com/epk/epk.aspx?epk_id=180817

[IrishRover]

many thanks foir the loink, yeah, tois' great moix prevoiew, boith soides.

[MacRua]

For those who still try to keep up with the plot:
Release date has been rescheduled once again: now it's mid May. With a CD launch party taking place on 14th May, at The Borderline.

Shane MacGowan guests on an album
It could happen to a Pope!
HotPress
25 Mar 2009

Shane MacGowan features on three of the tracks, which grace the new Popes album, Outlaw Heaven.

The Celtic barnstormers in question are the title-track, ‘Loneliness Of A Long Distance Drinker’ and ‘Bastard’ – nobody said anything about it being subtle! Also on the guest-list is Shane’s fellow Pogue Spider Stacey.

The album was inspired by the time lead singer Paul ‘Mad Dog’ McGuinness spent recently on remand for perverting the course of justice.

‘I hated being stuck in a cockroach, mice infested 8x6 cell for 23 hours a day, but once I got over the bad food and cramped conditions I began to realise it was the best thing to happen to me in a long time,” McGuinness reflects. “I imagined I was in a luxury hotel getting the rest, detox and seclusion I needed to sort my life out. I also met some of the kindest, straightest, upfront people ever, and that was only the murderers! Prison is however the mother of creativity and before you could say ‘Outlaw Heaven’ I was off writing and singing songs to my cellmate. I didn’t have a guitar so I wrote the lyrics down on the three pieces of paper I was allowed every fortnight, the music I composed in my head. If I was able to get to church on Sunday I was able to borrow the priest’s guitar. Thank god for the folkmass – I never thought I’d say that!”

The collection is out here on May 8th.

[Mark_Wafc]

For those who still try to keep up with the plot:
Release date has been rescheduled once again: now it's mid May. With a CD launch party taking place on 14th May, at The Borderline.

"Shane is on his way, no really he is"

[MacRua]

Look, I didnt even mention Shane!

[Mark_Wafc]

Look, I didnt even mention Shane!

No, but i'll take a wild stab in the dark that the Popes will when advertising this album launch!

[MacRua]

Official support comes from Wiskey Jack and Drunken Balordi (they supported The Popes and Shane at the Jamm after show party last Dec) so far

[IrishRover]

foir all punks oiut there awoitoin' the new Popes album tois' due to release oin May 11th !

[old barney greyheron]

Concerning The Popes, I have a stonking good version of 'Hills of Connemara' on a cd...plundered from the internet by my brother in law, several years ago. He says it's the Popes, but I can find no mention of it anywhere on any Popes-related stuff on the net. It's fast, furious and has a wild instrumental 2nd half..if that makes sense...great to thrash a bodhrain to...I have to sit down afterwards! Any clued-up Popes heads out there..please confirm it's them..or not, as the case may be..

[MacRua]

Hills of Connemara is on both Popes' "solo" albums - Holloway Boulevard and Release The Beast (2 different versions even, live on CD1 and studio on CD2)

[old barney greyheron]

Blimey that was quick..ta very mucha.

[IrishRover]

there was a goig oin London, The Borderline, 14th May 09'..
were any Medusans at the very place?
woish oi was there.

[Low D]

there was a goig oin London, The Borderline, 14th May 09'..
were any Medusans at the very place?
woish oi was there.

Nope, but I did pre-order the new album. Waiting...

[Alex]

The Popes interview for new album Outlaw Heaven
www.telegraph.co.uk
By Adam Sweeting
Published: 2:44PM BST 02 Jun 2009


Paul 'Mad Dog' McGuinness talks about Outlaw Heaven, the second studio album by Shane MacGowan's former backing band The Popes.

Chaos has surrounded The Popes, ever since Shane MacGowan created them as his backing band in 1994 after he’d been thrown out of The Pogues for "unprofessional” behaviour. They made a couple of studio albums with MacGowan in the Nineties before the singer wandered off into drink-sodden limbo. The Shane-less Popes then scored a critical triumph with their 2000 debut album, Holloway Boulevard, but since then fans have had only a live album and the reissue, Release The Beast, to sustain them.

But at last a second studio album is wrapped and ready to go. Outlaw Heaven is a stirring and cathartic collection of songs which run the gamut from punk to country, delivered by a new band assembled by original Pope-in-chief Paul “Mad Dog” McGuinness. The disc resonates with echoes of The Clash, Bo Diddley and a whole history of Irish balladry, but thanks to the influence of new collaborators Charlie Hoskins and Will Morrison, there’s a punchy experimental edge to it too.

Raw, for instance, is a ferocious bellow of rage lifted by a throbbing electronic groove, while McGuinness’ lurid tale of self-martyrdom in Crucified is buttressed by a sonic cathedral of crunching powerchords, gospel voices and horns. The title track’s exuberant singalong is led by Shane MacGowan himself, making one of three guest appearances on the album.

“I’ve never seen Shane in better shape or more enthusiastic,” reports McGuinness, in a Dublin accent thick enough to steamroller tarmac. “I always had a great time with Shane, but this time it’s been great to meet some very fine new musicians and work with a different kind of person. “

HM Prison Pentonville deserves a generous sleeve credit, because it was here that McGuinness began writing the Outlaw Heaven songs. He spent four and a half months on remand for perverting the course of justice, locked in an 8ft by 6ft cell. He’d been a heroin addict for more than decade, topping up with cocaine and alcohol on the side, and on top of everything else had been struggling with writer’s block.

“You were locked up for 23 hours a day, and if it was a good day you might get outside for half an hour,” McGuinness recalls. “I had a serious drug habit when I went into Pentonville, and I went through a whole detox in there, so I have to thank Her Majesty for the holiday and for the inspiration. They talk about [bluesman] Robert Johnson doing a deal with the devil - I’ve done a deal with God. I got myself together and cleaned myself up a little bit.”

Paradoxically, the primitive conditions in prison acted as a spur. He was only allowed three pieces of writing paper per fortnight, so he developed the habit of preserving his lyrics in tiny handwriting. The only way he could get access to a guitar was to attend the Sunday folk-mass and borrow one from the priest.

“I’d work the tunes out in my head, then I’d turn up early for mass, grab the priest’s guitar and try out the ideas. He was very annoyed because I could play better than him, but it was nice of him to lend me his guitar.

I wouldn’t recommend prison to anyone, but I knew it was the right place for me and that realisation was a big thing.”

McGuinness was eventually acquitted of all charges, but found surviving drug-free outside prison so terrifying that “as soon as I got out the first thing I did was run to a dealer". He learned to lean on valium and methadone instead of the harder stuff, and first teamed up with Hoskins and Morrison, musical partners for 15 years, at a St Patrick’s Day gig organised by friends ("when we first met Paul he was off his face, he literally couldn’t stand up,” Hoskins remembers). Undeterred, they set about recording an album at Hoskins’ studio in East Dulwich, gradually knocking McGuinness’ skeletal songs into shape while recruiting new bandmembers (bassist Laurie Norwood, fiddler Ben Gunnery, Fiachra Shanks on banjo and mandolin).

“We experimented with the songs, which is why it took a bit of time," says Morrison. “Charlie’s and my influence isn’t Irish at all -we don’t understand it. It all sounds the same to us! What we brought to the sound was more of a contemporary twist, but still retaining the Irishness. Every song has its own environment, but they all hang together next to each other.”

The next step is taking the band on tour, which McGuinness views with excitement mixed with apprehension.

“I love playing live most of all, but it used to be back to the dressing room and snorting lines off mirrors and all of that. What am I gonna do now?

It’s something I’m still trying to learn. I’m not at the finish line yet.”

* Outlaw Heaven is out now