The room hums before a note is played. Inside Sydney Opera House, there’s a sense this isn’t just a heritage run-through — it’s something looser, louder, more alive than that. Fourteen years since their last Australian visit, The Pogues return to celebrate Rum Sodomy & The Lash, and the result is anything but reverent.
When the opening notes land, the years collapse. Produced by Elvis Costello, the 1985 record still sounds gloriously unkempt — part poetry, part pub brawl, part hymn. Tonight, it’s played in full, but there’s nothing archival about it. The songs arrive with urgency, dragged into the present with grit under their fingernails.
The core of the band — Jem Finer, Spider Stacy and James Fearnley — anchor the performance, but this is a broadened, multi-generational ensemble that gives the material fresh weight. Around them, a formidable touring party reshapes the songs in real time: Holly Mullineaux (bass), Darragh Lynch (guitar), Jordan O’Leary (banjo), Fiachra Meek (pipes/whistles), and Jim Sclavunos on drums, whose presence adds a darker, percussive drive. The absence of Shane MacGowan, who died in 2023, lingers quietly over the performance, felt more in the spaces between lines than in any single moment.
Vocals are shared across a rotating cast — Iona Zajac (also on harp,) John Francis Flynn and Lisa O’Neill — each bringing a distinct texture. There’s no attempt to smooth the edges; instead, the songs splinter and reform depending on who’s at the mic. It gives the set a sense of movement, as if these tracks are still evolving rather than being preserved.
‘What makes the night land is the refusal to treat these songs as relics. They’re pushed, pulled, stretched — sometimes ragged, sometimes soaring — but always alive. Four decades on, Rum Sodomy & The Lash isn’t being preserved. It’s being reanimated.
The Pogues play one more show at the Sydney Opera House before their tour moves to New Zealand.
Images Deb Pelser
