If you've never heard any music by the Irish-punk band the Pogues, then it's going to be difficult to describe exactly what they are. In fact, it might be a misnomer to label them as a punk band, because if you listened to a Pogues' song you probably wouldn't think of it as being "punk." The Pogues feature an accordion, a mandolin, a couple of banjos and a tin whistle; does that sound like a punk line-up to you? I think the closest I could come to describing what exactly the Pogues are is this: they are an acoustic Irish band, heavily influenced by the Clash, formed in the early '80s who do a lot of traditional Irish songs and a lot of other original songs that tend to be mostly about alcoholism and death.
"Red Roses for Me" (released in 1984) is the first Pogues' album, and of the first three Pogues' albums, it is the most underrated. That is not to say that it is better than "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash" or "If I Should Fall From Grace With God"; rather, both of those albums are probably better then Red Roses. But Red Roses is often overlooked, and should still be held with the same regard as Rum and If I Should Fall. Although it is a bit corny at spots, and some songs really sound like they were made for a band's debut album (not that that's a bad thing, as it is true), the high points on Red Roses are as great as any other Pogues' songs out there.
Did I mention that the Pogues were an Irish band? Well if I didn't then you're in luck, because expect me to repeat that about another three thousand times in the following review. It's not just that the Pogues are Irish; the Pogues are REALLY Irish. The name of the album "Red Roses for Me" was inspired by a 1943 play written by Sean O'Casey. Their band name was originally Pogue Mahon (it was later shortened), which is a Gaelic phrase meaning "kiss my arse." The phrase also appeared in James Joyce's "Ulysses," and speaking of that massive tome the first song on Red Roses, Transmetropolitan, also features a reference to "Ulysses"; the song contains the lyric "with a K.M.R.I.A.," which is the name of a section in "Ulysses." Obviously KMRIA stands for "kiss my royal Irish arse" (mad props to poguetry.com for all this worthless trivia that nobody will care about).
The point of all that is that the Pogues are very, very Irish. If you're going to listen to listen to a Pogues album, you should expect as such. I'm not sure if it sounds as normal as can be to somebody actually from Ireland, but to my American ears this album sounds more Irish than Conan O'Brien throwing bottles of Guinness at my head. Anyway, because this band is so Irish, the Pogues do a lot of traditional Irish songs.
The Pogues have done a lot of traditional songs and done them very well; for example, the cover of the traditional song "Whiskey in the Jar" with the Dubliners. And while the traditional songs on Red Roses are pretty good, they aren't nearly as good as later traditional songs the Pogues would do, or for that matter, as good as the original songs on Red Roses. It's not that they're performed poorly; it just seems that they didn't necessarily pick out the best possible traditional arrangements to use. For example, the song "the Auld Triangle" was originally a poem written by Irish playwright and Pogue favorite Brendan Behan. It's not that it's a bad poem, but the track of Auld Triangle on Red Roses is just basically that poem set to music. And it's pretty much exactly as dull as you'd imagine a song simply set to a poem would be, which is very dull.
The other problem with these traditional songs is that, even when they're good (and not dull), they are fabulously corny. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I think the best way I can describe some songs like Waxie's Dargle, Poor Paddy and Greenland Whale Fisheries is to say that those are the songs Achewood's Ray Smuckles would have playing at a house party with an Irish theme. I mean it's not saying that these are bad songs, but they are really stereotypically Irish (which is saying an awful lot, since one of those song titles contains the name of a country which isn't Ireland). You could just imagine somebody doing Riverdance to Greenland Whale Fisheries. And what's ironic is that Waxie's Dargle and Poor Paddy are arguably the most punk-sounding songs on the whole album, as they both contain an awful lot of screaming. Maybe I'm just racist against the Irish, but for me screaming on a song makes it sound even more stereotypically Irish.
There is also a rare version of Red Roses that includes two additional traditional songs, "Whiskey, you're the Devil" and "Muirshen Durkin," but I'll be crapped if I can find this version anywhere. But even without those two songs, about a third of Red Roses is still based on traditional arrangements, and of the original songs, two of those are instrumentals. Although it isn't as apparent on Red Roses as it is on some of the later albums, MacGowan is a tremendous songwriter.
Even though I think we can all agree that there's nothing quite like a good accordion, tube biggest strengths of this album are MacGowan's songwriting and MacGowan's singing, in that order. What makes Red Roses just as good as any other Pogues' album is that MacGowan's songwriting here is just as brilliant. The lyrics are often cryptic, such as on Dark Streets of London, which is an incredibly sad song about someone getting electroshock therapy, however unless you pick up and get the reference to "ECT" then this song sounds pretty much as upbeat and catchy as any song could be. The Boys From The County Hell is a very cool song that sounds like it would fit perfectly on the soundtrack of a spaghetti western. The song contains allusions to murderers, massacres and Irish fascists, yet the refrain is "And it's lend me ten pounds, I'll buy you a drink / And mother wake me early in the morning" (although it kind of sounds like "and muddah wake me oirly in the merning") which I don't really understand, but that doesn't mean it can't sound cool. I'm not entirely sure that I understand some of the obscure meanings and references in some of the lyrics in Red Roses, but I don't think that necessarily detracts from the quality of this album. And I think that's really saying a lot, because I tend not to like things if I don't know what the hell is going on.
However, where it is problematic to say "I can't understand what the hell he said" on this album is in regards to actually physically understanding the lyrics. There are parts on this album where MacGowan sounds like he's singing with a mouth full of peanut butter. Here's an example: the song Sea Shanty is a great song (with a very descriptive title), and it has great lyrics. However, you're only going to know that it has great lyrics if you go online and search for the lyrics because there is no way in hell you're going to be able to transcribe the lyrics by just listening to the song. I DEFY you to actually understand what the hell is being said. Even if you do find the lyrics to the song, you'll still doubt that that's what's being said. This isn't a completely pervasive problem on Red Roses.
Most of the songs are relatively easy to understand the actual words, and I've never had a problem comprehending MacGowan on any song aside from a few on Red Roses. But once again, the few songs where you can't tell what the hell is being said, let alone what it would actually mean anyway (Transmetropolitan, Sea Shanty, Down in the Ground where the Dead Men Go), are catchy enough that you don't necessarily mind that you can't understand the lyrics (and actually, the song Down in the Ground Where the Dead Men Go is sort of a duet with MacGowan and Pogues' tin-whistle player Spider Stacey, although it's not like Stacey is any more easily understood then MacGowan). It's sort of like when you hear a song in a language you don't speak but you decide that you like the song anyway. Except in this case the language is Irish.
The only other drawback with Red Roses is the two instrumentals. Usually Pogues' instrumentals are good enough to make up for the fact that they're inherently absent of MacGowan's lyrics. However, the two instrumentals here are almost indistinguishable from each other, and are just basically boring. If you're listening to this album in your stereo, you're going to be skipping over the instrumentals. Seriously, I don't think I could tell Dingle Regatta apart at all from The Battle of Brisbane, and you'd think with titles like that those would be very different songs.
These aren't real big drawbacks to this album, but what do they mean? Well, it means that you can pretty much tell that this is the group's first album. This isn't a knock against Red Roses; it's just that it's pretty obvious that parts of it are a little rough. If you listen to this album, and then "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash" and then "If I should Fall from Grace with God," you can really see the evolution of the Pogues. Red Roses is still a great album, and you should still go out and buy it, or download it, whatever.
