The Pogues you will see at the Showbox Sodo are not the Pogues you
ought to know. That’s not a discouragement—for God’s sake, catch
the band play with singer Shane MacGowan while you have the chance. But
know that MacGowan is a toothless, doddering shade of the garrulous
poet-philosopher he once was. During a concert last fall in San
Francisco, he had to be helped onstage, where he draped himself over
the microphone stand like it was the only thing holding him up. (The
show was still a beer-swinging, line-kicking, shout-along
throwdown.)

The Pogues you ought to know are the Irish-folk-punk trailblazers
who recorded Rum, Sodomy & the Lash. Their second album,
originally released in 1985 and rereleased in an expanded version in
2005, is a picture of a band at their creative peak and proof of
MacGowan’s brilliance. The very existence of “lit rock”—bands
like the Decemberists, Two Gallants, and Okkervil River who flaunt the
knowledge and vocabulary of a comparative literature
professor—begins with MacGowan. In the opening song, “The Sick
Bed of Cuchulainn,” MacGowan references a hero of Celtic mythology, the
IRA, Italian fascists, and a 1940s Irish opera singer; the story he
tells is abstract but bristling with detail:

McCormack and Richard Tauber are singing by the bed

Theres a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your
head

There’s devils on each side of you with bottles in their hands

You need one more drop of poison and you’ll dream of foreign
lands

That one’s followed by “The Old Main Drag,” about a beating MacGowan
got at the hands of police after landing in the drug-fueled tranny
scene of London’s Piccadilly Circus. A few songs later is the
heartbreaking “A Pair of Brown Eyes,” about a distraught young lover
seeking to drown his sorrows at the pub (while listening to Johnny
Cash), only to be out-distraughted by a crippled military veteran with
a sadder tale to tell. And the Pogues’ eight-minute version of “And the
Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” a ballad about the Battle of Gallipoli,
is tragic and haunting—much like MacGowan himself.

There’s so much lyrical loam to dig into that going song by song
would take pages. (There’s a terrific website dedicated to that:
www.poguetry.com.) And
MacGowan’s voice—snarling with punkish grit, or bellowing like a
drunken hobo under a full moon, or a clear and sober croon—is
always rich with pathos, wit, and weariness. It gave a dignified drama
to his words and hit like a kick to the gut.

The Pogues play Wed–Thurs Oct 17–18 at the Showbox
Sodo.