RECORDS

On this, their first new album since 1985’s terrific Rum, Sodomy And The Lash, the Pogues prove rather convincingly that growing up doesn’t necessarily mean a loss of spirit, or nerve, or ideals. Not that they’re not still the same gang of rabble-rousing, whiskey-stained bums whose when-worlds-collide sour mash of traditional Irish folk music and nihilistic English punk thrashings made them the talk of the barstools on both sides of the Atlantic just a few years ago.