Few bands treat pretty melodies with the brutality of The Pogues.
So it was easy to forgive the famed Celtic-roots rockers for going a little overboard at the Warehouse Tuesday.
They were sober, compared to their legendary drinking days -- that is, they enjoyed a few pints but chased them with water instead of whisky -- so The Pogues might have been overcompensating.
The new songs, mostly from their current disc Pogue Mahone, never strayed far from the Chieftains-in-a-train-wreck variety rock sound they pioneered.
Actually, the train wreck part came courtesy of the Warehouse's daunting acoustics, which mash the attack of most bands -- especially those who rely on accordion and mandolin as much as electric guitar and drums.
The Pogues used the din to their advantage.
The seven-piece group ran rough-shod through such crazed reels as the new Tosspint. Singer Spider Stacy yelled out pretty waltzes with abandon -- the Ewan MacColl classic Dirty Old Town, for instance. The band even worked in pure-pop gems like Another Tuesday Morning without spreading themselves too thin.
All this, even though their repertoire was almost halved several years ago when they sacked singer Shane MacGowan.
Unfortunately, Stacy looked a bit lost at times in the frontman role. An impressive leader and suitably raspy singer, his tin whistle playing -- a Pogues-trademark since their inception 12 years ago -- was practically dropped from the set.
The Pogues dug into their past toward the end of the show, revising Turkish Song Of The Damned -- complete with didgeridoo -- and the excellent Sally MacLennan.
Other obligatory crowd-pleasers included the rollicking Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah, which suffered at the valves of Jem Finer's sax.
Finer's banjo playing, however, was a high point throughout. Though he got to redeem himself as a sax player on Fiesta, it was still a ramshackle, nostalgic end to an energetic show.
But judging by The Pogues' more caring treatment of their newer work, they obviously have their feet planted firmly in the here-and-now.
