Shane MacGowan, Mephistophelean Mick; And You Will Know Us by Our Trail of Dead Sound Like Sonic Youth Circa '83.
With all the passion the Pogues put into performing and carousing, each gig felt like it might be the band's last. MacGowan's taste for excess forced their divorce in the early 90s, and the remaining bandmembers Shanelessly went on their way, recording two lackluster albums before calling it quits. MacGowan, meanwhile, resurfaced with a band cheekily named the Popes. Everyone's first-round pick in the office dead pool, MacGowan continues to cheat the reaper. Shane and the Popes have released two albums together, and tour fairly regularly.
It's anyone's guess as to which Shane will show up for a gig, assuming he arrives at all. Usually it's the slurring one, stumbling onstage well past fashionably late, clutching the microphone stand for dear life, growling indiscernible salutations to the crowd and performing cursory versions of some of the most heartfelt songs in pop music history. On rare occasions, it's Shane the dark prince. He, too, slurs and is tardy, but once the music kicks in, he's all business, firing up the crowd with his hard-won barroom bark and doing vocal justice to the gems he's penned.
The Irving Plaza crowd was treated to good Shane this night. With a pint glass full of a margarita and a constant stream of cigarettes, MacGowan delivered 75 minutes of ragged brilliance. Peppering his tunes with enough fucks, toorahloorahloos and wackformedaddys to keep the House of Pain types happy, MacGowan, showing a paunch, conducted the band like a sinister maestro as they kicked off with an inspired "If I Should Fall from Grace with God." Animated and in fine voice, MacGowan tapped into his post-Pogues oeuvre for "Paddy Rolling Stone" and "Donegal Express," the latter's chorus of "I might've fucked yer missus, but I never fucked yer daughter" always a crowd pleaser. There were traditional covers, along with Pogues classics like "Sick Bed of Cuchulainn," "A Pair of Brown Eyes" and "Bottle of Smoke."
And the Popes? Well, they're no Pogues, but you knew that. More blues than green, they provided capable, if unspectacular, backup, and were warmly received by the crowd. Each song saw the pogo pit extend a bit farther until the entire room was a giant kinetic bob. All the old Pogues concert trappings were there: pools of vomit, bathroom lines extending to the lobby, the bar five-deep, friends holding up colleagues who could not stand on their own, revelers slipping in the beer-and-barf soup after throwing roundhouse punches that missed their marks. And the Mephistophelean mick smiled his crazy, toothless smile at all he'd wrought.
The set closed with a cover of "The Irish Rover," before the band reemerged for an encore. "Streams of Whiskey" led into Hank Williams' fittingly titled "Angel of Death," the song's dirge-y pace doing nothing to stem the crowd-surfing. MacGowan then brought out Victoria Clarke to share "Fairytale of New York," that marvelously maudlin duet about a Christmas Eve spent in a jail cell. As the Popes delivered the swaying melody, MacGowan tried to engage Clarke in a waltz. Perhaps the only one in attendance not won over by him, she resisted, and the pair crashed clumsily to the floor. It certainly wasn't the first time a show ended with Shane MacGowan on his ass. But the man's work was done, and no one in the room would begrudge him his rest.
Michael Malone
I don't want to name names here. And You Will Know Us? are the latest bright guitar hopes trailed over here in Britain by a music press desperate for a return to the Glory Days (and sales figures) of U.S. underground rock in the early 90s. This means that (a) they sound like Sonic Youth circa 1983, (b) they're influenced by the afro haircuts and shoe-burning antics of proto-Riot Boy band Nation of Ulysses, and (c) they understand a few basic tenets of rock music. That is: the moment is all, image counts for everything and it doesn't matter whether you managed to sound check or not, not when you can do all your tuning up in front of the audience and pass it off as insurrectionist art.
And You Will Know Us? are a unit. Not one member stands out. Conversely, all members radiate sexual energy and presence. Two boys synchronize their guitar movements like trained athletes. Another prowls the edge and starts chanting Patti Smith and No Wave poetry. A fourth or fifth bangs the drums like one should, with plenty of silences in between.
This is good. This is well and good. There are no songs played tonight, just a sequence of moments in time, slow-burning guitar riffs played over and over until they take on an almost terrifying coherence that transcends their base origins. And You Will Know Us? have been compared to Sonic Youth by far more impressionable critics than I, with reason. UK single "Mistakes and Regrets" has the same love for cadences, and fretboard harmonics, and sawed guitars, and the turbulent, almost Greek bouzouki sound?songs played so fast and viciously they become almost a blur. This is full-throttle millennial rock, absolutely in your face and thrashing. Like Sonic Youth, And You Will Know Us? also have moments of surprising subtlety?the calms after the storms, songs like "Claire de Lune" and the tormented "A Perfect Teenhood."
The Sonic Youth comparison is also way off. And You Will Know Us? have a macho feel to their rock, a nearly emo-core side that the far more feminine Youth would never have countenanced. Some songs sound almost bludgeoning, especially when the singer's veins start popping out his forehead (a la Rollins). Who cares, though? I just want that damn Rickenbacker to meet an untimely end.
Everett True