The INDEPENDENT (uk version) 22nd dec
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The INDEPENDENT (uk version) 22nd dec
Thu Dec 22, 2005 5:48 pm
has a 4 star review of the first night at Brixton. And a colour pic of Chevron and MacGowan. Can't seem to find it online.
- Guest
Thu Dec 22, 2005 6:59 pm
To be precise, it's a colour picture of Terry, myself, James, Andrew and Shane. But this critic evidently had less to drink than his colleagues on the Sun, the Telegraph and the Times.
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philipchevron - Harlequin
- Posts: 11126
- Joined: Thu Oct 14, 2004 12:03 am
Thu Dec 22, 2005 8:24 pm
The Independent , Dec.22 '05
(scanned from print edition)
Not yet fallen from grace: The Pogues at Brixton Academy, with Shane MacGowan at the microphone
JOEL RYAN/PA
Nostalgia with a fairy-tale ending
THE POGUES
Brixton Academy
LONDON ****
It is usual, and generally accurate, to suggest that bands who continue to tour long past their creative sell-by date have become a cabaret turn. But the Pogues, while apparently having little to offer any more but the opportunity for a massed nostalgic sing-along, are more of a circus act whose star attraction is the Amazing Indestructible Shane MacGowan.
He was once marvelled at, quite properly, for his warm, witty, inventive, romantic, songs. He is now marvelled at for his ability to stand more or less upright, and to sing more or less the words to those songs —the best of which he wrote nearly two decades ago - despite a well-chronicled history of drink and drug consumption so colossal that it seems less like enthusiastic rock’n’roll excess and more like the longest unsuccessful suicide attempt in history. In fairness to MacGowan, when he totters on stage tonight, he looks pretty good for a man of 93, which would reflect even better on him if he wasn’t due to turn 48 this Christmas Day.
The incarnation of The Pogues that MacGowan is leading on this tour is the eight-piece line-up that made the album that the band should be remembered for — 1988’s flawless If I Should Fall from Grace With God - and the other seven members, in all seriousness, are looking in fine shape. MacCowan must be the painting in their collective attic.
The first half-dozen songs are distinctly unpromising. MacGowan gets most of the lyrics in the right order, but there praise for his abilities as a frontman must end. On “Streams of Whiskey”, “Turkish Song of the Damned” and “Rain Street”, any member of the audience could have sung better - so, indeed, could any of those gentlemen whose daytime occupation is standing outside a bookmaker’s barking at traffic. The rest of the band sound hesitant, as if tiptoeing around the unpredictable figure clinging limply to the lead microphone. They do much better during MacGowan’s absences from the stage, for Spider Stacy’s slight but lovely “Tuesday Morning”, Terry Woods’s “Young Ned of the Hill”, Phil Chevron’s resoundingly gorgeous diaspora hymn “Thousands Are Sailing” - dedicated to several named fans who’d travelled long distances to be here - and the old but recently apposite instrumental “Repeal Of The Licensing Laws”.
Gradually, however, things improve. While MacGowan’s vocals are no longer remotely capable of keeping company with The Pogues’ more rumbustious numbers, his delivery of the ballads tonight is as plausibly wracked as on any of his magnificent recordings — “The Old Main Drag”, his tale of the decline of a broken-down rent-boy, inspires a surreally celebratory singalong; “A Rainy Night in Soho” is lovely; and his strangely eloquent slurring of the set-up to “The Body of an Ani~erican” seems to fire him with the confidence necessary to step up the pace when the song does. Bythe time The Pogues barrel with feral fury through “The Irish Rover”, all eight men on stage are wearing grins wider than their heads, and they sound like what they were in the late 1980s — one of the most exciting live rock’n’roll bands in the world.
The two vast, glittering Christmas trees book ending the stage had acknowledged all night what everyone had really come to hear and “Fairytale of New York” duly appears in the second encore. Shane duets with Ella Finer, the teenage daughter of the Pogues’ banjo player, Jem Finer. She wears a scarlet dress well, does ample justice to Kirsty MacColl’s part, and keeps Shane upright as they waltz through the song’s coda in a blizzard of artificial snow.
No more could be asked of her, or of the song (everyone should feel like they want to tell someone they’ve built their dreams around them once in their life) or, all things considered, of The Pogues. Against intimidating odds, it is an eventual triumph.
Andrew Mueller
(scanned from print edition)
Not yet fallen from grace: The Pogues at Brixton Academy, with Shane MacGowan at the microphone
JOEL RYAN/PA
Nostalgia with a fairy-tale ending
THE POGUES
Brixton Academy
LONDON ****
It is usual, and generally accurate, to suggest that bands who continue to tour long past their creative sell-by date have become a cabaret turn. But the Pogues, while apparently having little to offer any more but the opportunity for a massed nostalgic sing-along, are more of a circus act whose star attraction is the Amazing Indestructible Shane MacGowan.
He was once marvelled at, quite properly, for his warm, witty, inventive, romantic, songs. He is now marvelled at for his ability to stand more or less upright, and to sing more or less the words to those songs —the best of which he wrote nearly two decades ago - despite a well-chronicled history of drink and drug consumption so colossal that it seems less like enthusiastic rock’n’roll excess and more like the longest unsuccessful suicide attempt in history. In fairness to MacGowan, when he totters on stage tonight, he looks pretty good for a man of 93, which would reflect even better on him if he wasn’t due to turn 48 this Christmas Day.
The incarnation of The Pogues that MacGowan is leading on this tour is the eight-piece line-up that made the album that the band should be remembered for — 1988’s flawless If I Should Fall from Grace With God - and the other seven members, in all seriousness, are looking in fine shape. MacCowan must be the painting in their collective attic.
The first half-dozen songs are distinctly unpromising. MacGowan gets most of the lyrics in the right order, but there praise for his abilities as a frontman must end. On “Streams of Whiskey”, “Turkish Song of the Damned” and “Rain Street”, any member of the audience could have sung better - so, indeed, could any of those gentlemen whose daytime occupation is standing outside a bookmaker’s barking at traffic. The rest of the band sound hesitant, as if tiptoeing around the unpredictable figure clinging limply to the lead microphone. They do much better during MacGowan’s absences from the stage, for Spider Stacy’s slight but lovely “Tuesday Morning”, Terry Woods’s “Young Ned of the Hill”, Phil Chevron’s resoundingly gorgeous diaspora hymn “Thousands Are Sailing” - dedicated to several named fans who’d travelled long distances to be here - and the old but recently apposite instrumental “Repeal Of The Licensing Laws”.
Gradually, however, things improve. While MacGowan’s vocals are no longer remotely capable of keeping company with The Pogues’ more rumbustious numbers, his delivery of the ballads tonight is as plausibly wracked as on any of his magnificent recordings — “The Old Main Drag”, his tale of the decline of a broken-down rent-boy, inspires a surreally celebratory singalong; “A Rainy Night in Soho” is lovely; and his strangely eloquent slurring of the set-up to “The Body of an Ani~erican” seems to fire him with the confidence necessary to step up the pace when the song does. Bythe time The Pogues barrel with feral fury through “The Irish Rover”, all eight men on stage are wearing grins wider than their heads, and they sound like what they were in the late 1980s — one of the most exciting live rock’n’roll bands in the world.
The two vast, glittering Christmas trees book ending the stage had acknowledged all night what everyone had really come to hear and “Fairytale of New York” duly appears in the second encore. Shane duets with Ella Finer, the teenage daughter of the Pogues’ banjo player, Jem Finer. She wears a scarlet dress well, does ample justice to Kirsty MacColl’s part, and keeps Shane upright as they waltz through the song’s coda in a blizzard of artificial snow.
No more could be asked of her, or of the song (everyone should feel like they want to tell someone they’ve built their dreams around them once in their life) or, all things considered, of The Pogues. Against intimidating odds, it is an eventual triumph.
Andrew Mueller
- johnfoyle
- Il Capitano
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