Music Review: The Pogues - Hell's Ditch - Page 5

Had it been this new fangled remastered edition I'd heard back then, chances are that delirium would've lasted a solid month, seeing as how it now runs for 20 tracks as opposed to 13.

Now, pray tell, son, what at all are these new additions?

I'll tell you, surely I will, for they're a joy to have coil around the ossicles a time.

"Jack's Heroes", being the world-cup single recorded with The Dubliners, and its far-superior B-Side, a glorious, galloping take on "Whiskey In The Jar", are all the fun in the world, particularly the latter there, with Ronnie Drew and Shane tripping' o'er one another's beards in majestic, frenzied fashion throughout. They fairly singe the fugg from off the mentals, aye.

Many's a night way back when I roared with all the purple in my liver 'alongside those manic verses.

The duo of Jem Finer compositions, both featuring intense, if occasionally garbled, vocals from Lord MacGowan, are better again, particularly the bitter, snarling "Bastard Landlord".

First time I heard "Bastard Landlord" it was by way of a thirty second sound clip offered on Paddy Rolling Stone, the official Shane MacGowan website. God alone knows how often I replayed those thirty seconds, and should He ever feel like revealing the number He'll probably also offer a thought with regards the immense shame and sorrow I brought upon my family and upon the head of Lars Ulrich when, one winters night, I heard tell of an entity by the name of Napster which would, so the crack-raw fiends stood round the bus-shelter assured me, guide me towards a complete version of this most incredible recording.

It did, and I played it on repeat for eleven hours one evening whilst sobbing and screaming o'er sundry cans of vile supermarket lager.

Now I can be rid of those MP3's and what have you, thanks to these new editions, but by Jesus oh the blight on my soul will surely never be fully healed.

I'm sorry Lars Ulrich.

"Bastard Landlord" is astounding. What it tells of, is an Irish family who move to London and find themselves at the mercy of both a vast anti-Irish sentiment stewing in the alleys of the capital and also the whims of the Landlord of the title, a fella initially all the welcoming in the world, but who soon parts those yap-flaps of his for to reveal the unconscionable gluttonous lust for the green hidden 'hind that smile. "The landlord's conditions" sneers Shane. "Yearly they grew / with the size of his gut and his housing values".

It's an angry record, with echoes of "Masters Of War" here and there midst its chimes and its rolls and its aching harmonica. "I'm damned if I'll die for a property deal" rages the narrator as his fellow tenants fall to the curbsides left and right, and that defiant chorus;

Article Author: Duke De Mondo

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