Have yourself a merry little Christmas ... Shane MacGowan, drunk in reverie, at the Brixton Academy on Tuesday. Photograph: Frazer Waller / Live
People drink at gigs, true, but rarely with the single-minded devotion that can be seen when the band playing is the Pogues, writes Richard Brown. Their infamous pre-Christmas shows have become a London tradition, as evocative - and, arguably, as essential - as holly and mulled wine.
At the Brixton Academy on Tuesday night, Shane MacGowan's voice was often a drunken drawl and the band's undoubted musical talent lost in a muddy mix. But this was a celebration, not a recital. The benevolent boozers love this ersatz heritage and the moments of seasonal transcendence that it offers.
The Pogues' music is cheap, probably, but as addictive and cunningly captivating as cheap perfume. All the keening sentimentalism of the Irish diaspora is there, from mercenary adventurism and dawn romanticism to tales of Piccadilly rent boys. MacGowan shows how the simplest tunes can still entrance, when matched by his casual ease with alcohol, nostalgia and loss.
The band alternated MacGowan songs with their more recent material. But, with the exception of Thousands Are Sailing, the stage seemed bereft when he shambled away. As The Pogues return to play a raucous Sally MacLenanne, the crowd erupted into dancing, with beer slopping in time from plastic glasses onto the Academy's steeply raked floor.
Confetti spewed from above when the band returned for Fairytale of New York - at last. The audience broke into a slurred singalong with Shane's foggy duet. A brass section was brought on for the Spanglish mayhem of Fiesta, and the band was gone.
The music rings across Brixton. Of all the seasonal traditions I've witnessed, this is surely one of the best. Cheers to next Christmas.
