The pogues

Madra Salach did a good chunk of my work for me at the Electric Ballroom. I’d been wondering how I was going to avoid mentioning the Pogues, since it does seem a lazy point of comparison for any young Irish folk group that’s a bit different, especially as Madra Salach’s drone folk appears to have very little in common with their fierce melodicism. Then their singer Paul Banks, a burly young man with a charming line in cocky self-deprecation, started talking about how much they loved the Pogues, and introduced a cover of the one Pogues song that suits their style, ‘Turkish Song of the Damned’. No circumlocution required.

I was listening the other week to a solo album by an ageing rock guitarist, once terrifically famous. It was really very good, but I couldn’t bring myself to care about it because it clearly didn’t matter: this man’s career is static and it is likely to remain so. The album will make no impact on the wider world and, despite liking it, I felt no need to listen again. Had it been the debut by a band of 21-year-olds, on the other hand, I would have been all over it. Rock and pop musicians are most interesting in the transitions; that is, on the way up or on the way down. The journey up always – but always – accounts for the most interesting bit of any musician’s memoir, because they’re remembering when life was exciting.