Hell's Ditch

*No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.* - Oscar Wilde, preface to The Picture Of Dorian Gray (1891)

*Life's a bitch, then you die. Black hell.* - Shane McGowan Hell's Ditch (1990).

If The Pogues' latest album is a window to the soul of its main author, then Shane MacGowan is truly in the horrors. Was he not always so? Well, no. Listen, again to 'The Sick Bed of Cuchulann' (humour), 'A Pair Of Brown Eyes' (hope), and 'Fairytale Of New York' (love).

Now, however, with 'Hell's Ditch', Shane has finally discarded the last vestiges of covert optimism and plunged deep into a bottomless pit of sardonic resignation.

Producer Joe Strummer (like all good producers, soccer referees, editors etc) is unobtrusive, standing well back as The Pogues' frontman staggers to the microphone, spitting and snarling his way through a colourful series of cinematic word pictures. Take 'Rain Town' for instance: *There's a Tesco on the sacred ground/where I pulled her knickers down/while St. Judes took his measly price/and St. Anthony gazed in awe at Christ/I gave my love a goodnight kiss/I tried to take a midnight piss/But the toilet moved so again I missed*- 'Down Rain Street'.

And again on 'House Of The Gods' - which sounds like The Beach Boys doing a parody of The Golden Horde - Shane elucidates thus on matters personal: *Met a girl said she's really going to blow my mind/She says she don't mean sex and I say alright/turns out she's a bloke, tries to give me head/I have to run out screaming to the street instead/I'm just a wally/hanging out on Pattaya Beach*.

In fact Shane's Far-Eastern sojourn, whether real or imagined, inspires three of his nine compositions - the beautiful lilting strains of 'Summer In Slam', the slightly countryish 'Sayonara' (where much Mekong whiskey is imbibed) and the aforementioned 'House Of The Gods'. Other highlights include the ironic 'Sunnyside Of The Street' (shades of The Clash's 'Safe European Home'), 'Lorca's Novena', where the eponymous poet is murdered - *(they) blew his brains out with a pistol up his arse* - and the title track 'Hell's Ditch', a children's nursery rhyme of particularly dark intent: *Genet's feeling Ramon's dick/The guy in the bunk above gets sick/In the cell next door the lunatic/starts screaming for his mother/Black dido. Black hell.*

Sadly there is no songwriting contribution here from Philip Chevron. The album does, however, feature 'Rainbow Man' by Terry Woods and 'The Wake Of Medusa' by James Fearnley - both of which may well have some currency in isolation but, when placed among Shane's rough diamonds, quickly lose their value.

Musically the band still plough the same furrow of traditional Celtic punk, with Terry Woods holding it altogether in his usual inimitable fashion. Somehow, however, I think The Pogues are in trouble. Why? Because the lyric sheet reads like a public suicide note and Shane sees to have lost his lust for life.

That said, even a below par Shane MacGowan can still piss, shit and puke over other serious songwriters. Listen without prejudice indeed. Hell's Ditch has its charms.