Rum Sodomy & the Lash

Rum Sodomy & the Lashis the second studio album by the London-based, Irishfolk punkbandthe Pogues, released on 5 August 1985.The album reached number 13 on the UK charts. The track "A Pair of Brown Eyes", based on an older Irish tune, reached number 72 on the UK singles chart. "The Old Main Drag" later appeared on the soundtrack to the filmMy Own Private Idaho.
The album's title is taken from a quotation attributedtoWinston Churchill:"Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing butrum,sodomy, and thelash." The title was suggested by drummerAndrew Ranken, who said "it seemed to sum up life in our band".
The cover artwork is an altered version ofThe Raft of the Medusa, aRomantic-erapainting byTheodore Géricault, with the band members' heads, painted byPeter Mennim,replacing those of various figures on the raft.
Elvis Costello, whose managerJake Rivieraapproached the band, was originally employed to produce two songs for a single, "A Pair of Brown Eyes" and "Sally MacLennane", but after recording at Elephant Studios in Wapping was extended Costello agreed to record the entire album.Chevron later said, "The Pogues needed, more than anything, not to be not so much as produced as facilitated. Recording the band as live as possible, but with a great deal of natural acoustic presence in the instruments – was quite a revolutionary thing to do 1985." Costello said, "I saw my task was to capture them in their dilapidated glory before some more professional producer fucked them up."
Rum Sodomy & the Lashreceived very positive reviews from critics.Melody Maker'sAdam Sweetingsaid, "The brightest, most intense moments ofRum ...aren't about particularities of style or delivery. This is, apart from anything else, music to hang on to other people by to stave off brutal fact and the weight of history. While The Pogues make music for drunks as well, probably, as anyone has they're also dragging an oft-ignored folk tradition into the daylight with an altogether improbable potency ...Rum ...has soul, if not a great deal of innovation, and somewhere among the glasses and the ashtrays lie a few home truths."Sounds'Jane Simon calledRum Sodomy & the Lash"the finest slice of story-telling your heart could wish for".David QuantickofNMEdescribed the record as "a collection of free-ranging stuff to be sure; from the funereal folk ballad to the near spaghetti-western instrumental, raucous celebration to brown study, cheerful melody to downright strangeness. It's never sentimental, it's rarely polite, and it's certainly not ordinary ...Rum Sodomy and the Lashis more than the best record The Pogues could be expected to make at this time. It's more than a brilliant example of a band using its resources in an imaginative manner. It's probably the best LP of 1985."Robert ChristgauofThe Village Voicewrote that "none of it would mean much without the songs—some borrowed, some traditional, and some proof that MacGowan can roll out bitter blarney with the best of his role models."
In a retrospective review, Mark Deming ofAllMusicstated thatRum Sodomy & the Lash"falls just a bit short of being the Pogues' best album, but was the first one to prove that they were a great band, and not just a great idea for a band."Daniel Bristow of the Irish music website CLUAS awarded the album an eight out of ten, calling it "a record that will never cease to delight, always a pleasure to hear and highly, highly recommended if you're not familiar with it already".Mark Cooper ofQdescribed the record as "a proud, defiant bruise of an album that manages to be both profoundly bleak and immoderately romantic and it remains MacGowan's and The Pogues' finest hour".Uncut's Jon Wilde wrote that "the most startling thing about their second album was the steep ascendancy of MacGowan's songwriting",whileSpin's Jon Dolan said that the album contained "some of the purest toothless lyricism in punk-rock history."
In 2000,QplacedRum Sodomy & the Lashat number 93 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. In 2012, the album was ranked number 440 onRolling Stone'sThe 500 Greatest Albums of All Timelist.Pitchforknamed it the 67th best album of the 1980s.The album was also included in the book1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
A remastered and expanded version ofRum, Sodomy & the Lashwas released forcompact discby WEA in the European market on 11 January 2005; this re-issue was released on September 19, 2006, byRhino Recordsin the United States. The remastered disc added sixbonus tracks, including the entirety of thePoguetry in MotionEPand theB-sidesto "Dirty Old Town" – "A Pistol for Paddy Garcia" onseven-inchand "The Parting Glass" ontwelve-inchsingles. The reissue includedliner notesby David Quantick and a poem about the Pogues byTom Waits.
Credits are adapted from the liner notes ofRum Sodomy & the LashandPoguetry in Motion, except where noted.