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;
"Bricks and mortar, a kingdom of stone,
When you die you're on your own,
They'll carve your name where you lie,
And I for one,
No tears will cry"
Finer's other offering, "Curse Of Love", is less aggressive, but not much less impressive. A glistening pop-folk lament that masks the terrors and torments of the lyrics, all direst prophecy and lovelorn abandon, with the lilting instrumentation wrapped 'round every red-raw line.
Three Shane MacGowan penned offerings are present also, two of which - the instrumental "Squid Out Of Water" with its jittering banjo and bar-room rattle, and "Infinity", a delightful romp somewhere between "White City" from Peace And Love, "London Girl" from Poguetry In Motion and the stomping, merseybeat-influenced single "Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah", - I'd never heard before. The joy of having those fantastic bastards finally unfold o'er the ear-wounds, well, it'd take more than my vocabulary for to do that feeling justice.
The very best additional track herein, though, and very possibly the very best additional track added to any album ever, and maybe even the second best song Shane MacGowan ever put his name to after "Fairytale Of New York", is the heart-breaking, nigh-on-unbearably-beautiful "Rainy Night In Soho".
Article comments
1 - -E
Congrats! This article has been selected as one of this week’s Editors’ Picks.
2 - Duke De Mondo
thank you!