The Rovers Return (Q magazine review of Brixton)

[Lade]

There's a review in this months Q magazine also of the 20 December gig.
4 out of 5 stars. Not a bad review considering it was written by Q magazine.

[Lade]

THE ROVERS RETURN

The Pogues
Brixton Academy, London 20 December 2005
4 out of 5 stars.

Shane MacGowan's having a party. One pint of Martini coming up.

IN THEORY, WE shouldn't be here at all. Reports of the deaths of The Pogues, both individually and as a group, have been bandied around for years. Their legendarily dissolute lifestyle had threatened to account for more than one of them over the years, and it seemed likely that their decision to split in 1996 was final. After 14 years stumbling around the world blind drunk, even sacking singer Shane MacGowan in 1991 for being too much of a liability, it was time to hang up their livers to rest. So when MacGowan, ever-present pint of Martini in hand, follows the band onstage, there's a devoted roar of relief.

While a seasonal re-recording of Fairy Tale Of New York sitting at Number 3 in the Christmas chart may account for some of the audience, most here are recidivists, returned from The Pogues'mid-'80s heyday to relive past piss-ups in breweries, with orders for halves of neat gin not uncommon at the bar. This devotion to method fandom is no surprise, however, as The Pogues were once among the most important groups in Britain. To generations brought up being taught that everyone with an Irish accent was a potential pub bomber, The Pogues introduced the notion that maybe their culture and people had been wronged, that there was more to Ireland than bearded men banging bodhrans while a collection bucket "for the Brothers" was passed around the pub. Their mixing of The Dubliners'doomed rebel romanticism with The Clash's politics into speed-fuelled trad-punk infected even those without sympathy for any cause. You didn't have to be Irish to empathise with the hopelessness of Dirty Old Town.

STILL TUMBLING WITH all their old energy through nearly two hours of belligerent bluster and heart-wrenching balladry, the sharply suited Pogues have lost none of the precision that allows them to sound so ramshackle. MacGowan is a revelation, his voice largely intact, even if his toothless diction is a little comic when singing, "schunny schide of the schtreet"

When Fairy Tale Of New York arrives in the encore, with falling snow and Christmas trees for a backdrop, the audience hurls what's left of their Guinness and gin into the air to throw their arms around each other, MacGowan waltzing awkwardly with Kirsty MacColl's substitute for the night Ella Finer, guitarist Jem's daughter. Its bilious tragedy reaffirms both the season's best intentions and the return of one of the British Isles'most loved acts. Whether there will be new material - MacGowan's writer's block of recent years reportedly crumbling along with his teeth - is irrelevant. For now, however briefly, they are as fiery and potent as ever.

ANDY FYFE

[Irish Rover]

Cheers for that Lade

[Blondie]

Thanks Lade

[Lade]

The review with photos can now be found here.
http://www.ktv.no/~oyl-ktv/q%20march%202006.htm

Cheers
Øyvind