SONGS from the CountyHELL
THE POGUES, THE DUBLINERS, THE MARY, WALLOPERS, LANKUM, LISA O’NELL AND MORE
THERE’S A GREAT SHANE MacGOWAN QUOTE FROM 2012 that kicks off our Pogues feature on page 62 this issue. “The energy of punk rock was already in Irish music,” he tells Andrew Perry. “When I was a kid, I saw The Dubliners, The Clancy Brothers – it was all around.”
That’s the spirit we’ve tried to tap on
Songs From The County Hell
. For this latest, and maybe rowdiest, MOJO compilation, we’ve followed the folk-punk energies of The Pogues backwards and forwards in time, honouring and upending traditions and creating new ones as they go. There are essential tracks from The Pogues, contemporaries like The Men They Couldn’t Hang, and heroes like the aforementioned Dubliners and Clancys. But we’ve also found room for a much younger generation of Irish musicians, many of whom pay explicit homage to The Pogues by reinventing Shane MacGowan songs that are now as timeless and intoxicating as the traditionals he loved himself.
The ghosts are rattling at the door. The devil's in the chair. Take one more drop of poison and crank this one up loud.
1 THE POGUES
THE SICK BED OF CÚCHULAINN
Camera Press/Paul Slattery,
Avalon.red/LFI, louisephillipsmusicphotography, Sorcha Frances Ryder, Claire Leadbitter, Phil Chevron, John Lyons & Ruth Clinton, World Image Archive/Alamy Stock Photo, Richard Dumas
Since we’re celebrating the 40th anniversary of
Rum Sodomy & The Lash
, where better to start than with that album’s rousing opener? Irish myth, radical politics, a trail of picturesque devastation stretching across Europe, and a high-velocity tune that sounds like it’s been around for centuries… The essence of The Pogues in three incredible minutes.