Hell’s Ditch: How The Pogues Strayed From The Beaten Track

The album’s title track, meanwhile, hitches a seafaring style to their supercharged traditional Irish folk sound, as if a sonic counterpart to the voyage the group now found themselves on. But any optimism is thrown overboard – “Back from heaven, back to hell” – even as they confidently master this new direction. The song is, however, a taster for one of the most startling stylistic shifts in The Pogues’ catalogue: Lorca’s Novena. Weaving lyrical references to the Spanish poet’s own works throughout a narrative that recounts his brutal murder at the hands of nationalists, the song switches between darkly atmospheric Spanish guitar runs – embellished with wordless backing vocals that offer haunting punctuation – and a more straightforward refrain that draws the listener back to solid ground.

Seeking redemption

Not that Hell’s Ditch is all choppy waters and deathly visions. There’s a deliberate nod to The Beach Boys’ You Still Believe In Me at the start of House Of The Gods (albeit one that transplants the California dreamers to Thailand’s Pattaya Beach, twisting their sonic beauties to altogether different narrative ends). The waltz-time Summer In Siam, meanwhile, all talking piano and gentle flute washes, also includes evocative Eastern percussion that, taken together, is perfect for the short, cyclical song’s dreamy escapism. “When it’s summer in Siam/And the moon is full of rainbows,” MacGowan sings, “Then all I really know/Is that I truly am/In the summer in Siam.” Any levity is only briefly glimpsed, however, as the song fades like a mirage, making way for Rain Street to come storming in. Capturing The Pogues at their shit-kicking best, the song hurtles through MacGowan’s narrative – a series of vignettes that find him seeking redemption through booze-addled eyes.

By the time of Hell’s Ditch’s release, on 6 November 1990, MacGowan’s voice, too, was beginning to show the strain. In the past he’d managed to inject the right amount of boozy weariness to his vocals – it was all part of the presentation. Now, however, he was audibly slurring and tumbling over his words. If multi-instrumentalists Jim Finer and Terry Woods stepped up admirably for Rainbow Man and The Wake Of The Medusa, respectively (the latter revisiting the story depicted in the painting that gave Rum Sodomy & The Lash its striking artwork), their presence also served to highlight MacGowan’s ailing condition.

A last missive

Sitting in the producer’s chair, The Clash’s Joe Strummer was also on hand to lend support during the sessions. A man whose own musical upbringing was shot through with folk history and punk aggression, he made a natural fit for The Pogues. Largely stepping back to just let them do their thing, he also knew how to give the album’s more straightforward moments – Rainbow Man, the closing Six To Go – a bit of the radio-friendly sonics that never did anything to hurt his former band’s own stylistic experiments. Soon, he would be fronting The Pogues for a brief spell, before being replaced by Spider Stacy.

What the remaining Pogues learned from Hell’s Ditch spilled into their two albums without Shane MacGowan – most notably on 1993’s Waiting For Herb. If MacGowan’s post-Pogues career found him making intermittent recordings with a new outfit, The Popes, for many fans, Hell’s Ditch remains a last missive from his glory days.

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