The Pogues: Rum, Sodomy & the Lash [WARNER]

Why you'll love it

This remastered 180g pressing comes with a picture and lyric inner sleeve printed on card. The album reached No. 13 in the UK and sits on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums and Q's 100 Greatest British Albums lists.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Remastered
• Printed lyric inner sleeve
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

Elvis Costello was hired to produce two songs for a single. He liked what he heard at Elephant Studios in Wapping so much that he stayed for the whole album, aiming, as he put it, to capture the band "in their dilapidated glory" and recording them as live as possible.

Shane MacGowan's songwriting takes a giant leap here. "A Pair of Brown Eyes" is built on an older Irish tune, "Sally MacLennane" is a pub-door stomp, "The Old Main Drag" later turned up in My Own Private Idaho, and their take on Ewan MacColl's "Dirty Old Town" has become a standard in its own right. Eric Bogle's "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" closes the record in heartbreaking style. The title comes from a quotation pinned on Winston Churchill, suggested by drummer Andrew Ranken because "it seemed to sum up life in our band," and Peter Mennim painted the band's faces onto Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa for the cover.

Q's Mark Cooper called it "MacGowan's and The Pogues' finest hour," and Pitchfork placed it among the best albums of the 1980s. Best played loud with the windows open, which our neighbours have described as one of the risks of living near a record shop.

Also at Kops: more The Pogues on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Pogue Mahone / Warner, a reissue of the 1985 album.