Thu Nov 11, 2004 12:04 am
The Pogues second LP to have been produced by Steve Lillywhite was, in retrospect, the giddy limit. It is absolutely heaving with snappy tunes, good ideas, musical virtuosity, flashes of lyrical genius and (to Mr Lillywhite's credit-AGAIN, Why did anyone ever doubt him?) production values which present the band as well, if not better, than any producer who ever taped them, but is still, I'm afraid, an artistic disaster.
It's often compared to "The White Album", in that it is a great LP by accident, compiled rather than composed. Assembled afterwards rather than conceived and executed by a musical unit. It's true, it COULD have been entitled "Now That's What I Call The Pogues", such is it's incoherent lurching from open to close; Worse, on more than one occasion, The Pogues are simply treading water, as even IF this album simply HAD to be a double-set, running more than an hour, it could probably have survived without yet another instrumental number using blaring brass to signify busy city streets.
For every bona-fide 'peach' ("Down All The Days", "Night Train To Lorca", "White City" etc) there's an absolute donkey; Many of them with more than the slightest whiff of 'out-take' to them. ("USA", "Blue Heaven", "Cotton Fields") The closing trio of "Tombstone", "Night Train..." and "London, You're A Lady" only serving to exacerbate the sense of disatisfaction by sounding JUST LIKE the final chapter of a proper Pogues record.
Could it have been ruthlessly edited down to a 40 minute, Pogues classic?
No. They hated the sight of each other by then, it would've meant one brutal fight none of them would've survived.