The Pogues play Red Roses for Me
3Arena, Dublin
★★★★★
“It’s kind of difficult to say how much this means,” Spider Stacy begins. It’s also difficult to say how a gig of this nature is going to go. It’s a 40th anniversary show for Red Roses For Me, The Pogues’s debut album. A previous shindig was held in the Hackney Empire earlier this year.
As the dozen-or-so-strong band takes flight, the immediate result is infectious, brilliant, so filled with passion: musicians attacking their instruments with controlled recklessness. Everyone in this vast room knows there and then, this is a night to set the week of winter solstice on fire.
The line-up is stacked, the gig’s poster barely containing it; Grian Chatten and Tom Coll of Fontaines DC, fresh from a brace of gigs at the same arena, members of The Pogues including James Fearnley, Jem Finer, Stacy, James Walbourne and a brass section. There’s Charles and Andrew Hendry and Seán McKenna of The Mary Wallopers, The Deadlians’s Seán Fitzgerald, Fiachra Meek of Alfi, Goat Girl’s Holly Mullineaux and Jim Sclavunos and George Vjestica of The Bad Seeds. We also get Jordan O’Leary, lately of The Scratch and a fantastic musician in his own right, Iona Zajac, Stick in the Wheel, Nadine Shah, Ian and Daragh Lynch of Lankum, Brigid Mae Power, Junior Brother, Kojaque and John Francis Flynn.
The first guest is Ian Lynch, or “one of the princes of darkness”, as he’s introduced by Stacy. Lynch is unleashed, lashing through Greenland Whale Fisheries as though he himself as tempest.
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Next behind another door of this seemingly endless Advent calendar is the Cabra man Kojaque.
Shah’s Auld Triangle is a masterclass in sustaining tension throughout an iconic tune yet somehow also rendering an original interpretation.
When Brigid Mae Power arrives, Stacy pays tribute to her father, the live music industry legend, Vince Power.
A couple of Mary Wallopers land, arguably the most direct musical descendants of The Pogues operating today.
Then it’s John Francis Flynn, who already committed a stunning interpretation of Kitty to record, and reprises a great version here.
The pace is relentless. Stick In The Wheel’s Dark Streets of London is another stunning highlight.
“Free Palestine,” Grian Chatten announces when he arrives on stage, before delivering a wonderful Streams Of Whiskey. This is followed by another brilliant moment, Jordan O’Leary – a solid presence all evening – duetting with Stacy on The Irish Rover.
Controlled chaos and uncontrollable passion spill over and are reined back in throughout. Stacy is a compelling ringmaster, with Tom Coll persistently excellent on drums.
Victoria Clarke, the late Shane MacGowan’s partner, arrives on stage at the outset of the encore. “I was afraid to come here tonight because I thought it would be too emotional,” she says, “a sense that Shane not being here would be too much for me”. She deduces that the band was so good, her fear was unnecessary.
Charles Hendy of The Mary Wallopers, and Radie Peat of Lankum and OXN bring the evening to an incredibly moving crescendo with Fairytale of New York, as artificial snow falls from the ceiling as though we’re in a dream sequence.
[ The Pogues at 3Arena: In picturesOpens in new window ]
Then, the finale, the entire cast of performers on stage bellowing out Dirty Old Town, as arms stretched outward and upward in the audience. For one night only, the greatest sing-song in the world called Dublin’s docklands home.
The only problem was, the crowd wouldn’t leave. There were roars for one more song. Streams Of Whiskey was reprised, applause rang out into the night, the crowd singing their way out on to the quays.
