Pogues – If I Should Fall From Grace With God

I saw the Pogues play only once, in 1989, as frontman Shane MacGowan was descending into drunkenness and a certain Tim Burton film was dominating the box office. Soused beyond measure, MacGowan staggered around the stage with little interest in singing, belching out a slurred and incoherent rant instead. The only words I could make out were, “Fuck you! Fuck you and your Batman!” It was hard to believe that just a year earlier, the band had recorded one of the finest albums of the ’80s. If I Should Fall From Grace With God, now remastered and reissued with six bonus tracks, was rooted in the same Irish-folk-with-a-punk-attitude that defined the group’s earlier releases, but it extended in new directions as well. The band had always mixed a little Americana with its music, whether by singing about Irish-Americans (here on “Thousands Are Sailing”, MacGowan’s lovely duet with Kirsty MacColl, “Fairytale Of New York”) or by embracing elements of our country music (this album’s title track). But now their sound seemed to encompass the entire globe, from the Mexican strains of “Fiesta” to the Gaelic/Ottoman fusion of “Turkish Song Of The Damned”. They had never been this good before — and, alas, they would never be again.