Results tagged “ireland”

Another March, another run of sold-out Pogues shows at the 9:30 Club. Despite the propitious occasion of St. Patrick’s Day — the equinox 'round which the graying-but-still-preeminent purveyors of Emerald Isle folk-punk (funk?) book their East Coast tours in recent years — Tuesday night’s hootenanny was no more gleefully shitfaced than their 9:30 gig from last year on March 9. In fact, it was arguably less so: Frontman Shane MacGowan seemed more lucid than the last time he stumbled through town, and his snarled vocals more intelligible. And the other seven active-duty Pogues? Affable, enthusiastic professionals all -- especially Spider Stacy, the group's tin whistler and fill-in frontman who who bashed a metal tray against his head whenever additional percussion was required. The mid-show appearance of a two-man horn section gave a warm shading to several unabashedly sentimental tunes, but especially a late-in-the-game “Rainy Night in SoHo.”

It’s sometimes poetic. It’s sometimes haunting. It’s consistently, well, long.

What better time than the day after the State of the Union address to be reminded that exaggeration, obfuscation, and just-plain-making-shit-up can be employed for benign purposes as well as sinister ones? Solas Nua's Trad is a show that delights in benevolent hyperbole like no other in recent memory, and its pleasures are plentiful indeed. Playwright Mark Doherty's wry, spry meditation on tradition and familial identity and especially -- O! How we we wish there was another word for this! -- blarney, falls somewhere in between Waiting for Godot and Waking Ned Devine on the sliding scale of existential Irish fearlessness vs. adorable, tweed-jacketed stereotypes.