I once saw Shane MacGowan and the Popes live. I suspect he may have been a mite inebriated. Actually he was clinging to the mic stand like a sailor in a strong gale, and the safe bet was he’d fall flat on his face. He didn’t. He saw it through. And he continues to see it through, but as anyone who’s seen the 2020 documentary Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan will tell you, he’s a in a terminal state of decline, his days as one of rock’s premier singers and songwriters almost certainly over.
Many wrote him off after The Pogues, tired of his erratic behavior and habitual alcohol and drug abuse, gave him the boot in 1992. He was in terrible shape, a shambles of a man, killing himself on the installment plan with strong spirits and every other illegal substance he could lay hands on.
But lo and behold he resurrected himself as the leader or the Popes, who released their debut LP The Snake in 1994. The smart money had it that the LP would be a sad and second-rate finale to MacGowan’s brilliant career. But The Snake proved them wrong. Human shipwreck or not, and try as he might, MacGowan had yet to booze his way to his own wake. The Snake is proof that while methodical self-destruction is in no way romantic, it needn’t stand in the way of making great art.
The Snake is a schizophrenic album, combining as it does hard rock and the Celtic folk punk favored by The Pogues. The LP also includes a pair of romantic duets that pair MacGowan with Sinead O’Connor (“Haunted”) and Máire Brennan (“You’re the One”). My initial reaction was that the parts didn’t fit. But as Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” No one has ever accused me of having a big mind. But after a few listens even my small mind came to the conclusion that the Popes’ scattershot approach works well with MacGowan—who loves both the Sex Pistols and the Dubliners—at the helm.
MacGowan and the six members of the Popes get plenty of support from fellow musicians. In addition to O’Connor and Brennan, Pogues Spider Stacy and Jem Finer make appearances, as do the Dubliners’ Barney McKenna and John Sheahan, and former Thin Lizzy and Motörhead guitarist Brian Robertson. Even Johnny Depp makes a cameo, contributing “weird guitar noises” to “That Woman’s Got Me Drinking.”
Album opener “The Church of the Holy Spook” is a jet-fueled hard rock departure from the Irish-flavored folk punk perfected by The Pogues. MacGowan seems to be embracing the Catholicism that was his birthright, and tallying the costs of abandoning his faith: “Rock and roll you crucified me/Left me all alone/I never should have turned my back on/The old folks back home.” Hard rock is also the order of the day on the raucous “That Woman’s Got Me Drinking.” Gin’s the poison of the day, ten’s the number of bottles, and you’d drink too if your girl treated you “like a piece of scum.” Great guitar solo included.
“I’ll Be Your Handbag” has nary a touch of Eire in it–only problem is MacGowan slurs his words, depriving us of lines like “Skinheads, coppers, all cock suckers, punks/Me I’m recovering from a nine day drunk.” The same is true of horn-enhanced “A Mexican Funeral in Paris.” MacGowan’s whisky-ravaged vocals make it virtually impossible to understand his yarn about Mexican criminals, a corrupt priest, and a drug deal gone bad. This is hardly the same Shane who packed both clarity and emotional punch into every syllable of “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda.”
“Victoria” also has a big kick, a hard-rocking solo and more hard-to-parse lyrics–MacGowan’s slur is part of his charm, but it would be nice if you didn’t need to consult a lyric sheet to understand his tale of opium euphoria and the woman it costs him.. Last in the pageant of incomprehensibility is the White City dog race that is “Donegal Express.” And it’s a damn shame, given that amongst the few lines I can make out are: “Kahaya! You fuck!/Come Hell or high water/I might have fucked your Missus/But I never fucked your daughter.”
And enunciation isn’t MacGowan’s only problem—there are moments when he seems to have lost the ability to carry a tune. And this too has its charm—”Haunted,” his lovely duet with O’Connor, works in part due to the Beauty and the Beast contrast between O’Connor’s fragile and crystal-clear vocals and MacGowan’s tattered off-key croak. His voice also falls to pieces on one of the album’s highlights, “Her Father Didn’t Like Me Anyway.” MacGowan staggers his way through a cover of a prissy folk rock tune by Gerry Rafferty, and ends it on a note the proper Rafferty would never imagined: “Her father was a ripe cunt anyway.”
Near the top of The Pogues-school material is “Nancy Whiskey,” with its jaunty banjo, whistle, and MacGowan’s lyrics about a woman with a twinkle in her eye who was his ruination. The sprightly “The Snake with the Eyes of Garnet” is a fanciful bit of Irish history about a snake pendant with eyes of garnet symbolizing the indomitable spirit of the Irish. “The Song with No Name” has all the emotional power of The Pogues’ lovely but sad “Broad Majestic Shannon.”
The LP’s remaining songs—”Aisling,” “The Rising of the Moon,” and “Roddy McCorley”—are very good songs indeed, but they don’t stand amongst MacGowan’s best. Which leaves us with the Popes’ take on the instrumental “Bring Down the Lamp” and MacGowan’s duet with Máire Brennan “You’re the One.” The latter—which comes complete with maudlin strings—is an embarrassment, and easily the worst song MacGowan put voice to. The lyrics are pure pap, the tune itself is Top Forty material, and it could be an Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta duet from Grease gone horribly wrong.
The Pogues put Ireland on the folk-punk map, and it’s inconceivable they could have done it without Shane MacGowan, the best Irish poet to come along since Brendan Behan. Like Behan—who once said “I’m a drinker with writing problems”—MacGowan ultimately sank into a sea of whiskey that laid waste to his creative powers. But his work with the Popes, who would go on to release 1997’s less well-received The Crock of Gold, proved he had no intention of going down without a kick to the bollocks and a spit in the eye. One man distillery or not, his spirit’s intact. MacGowan still clings to life, just as he did to that mic stand the night I saw him live.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
