Peace and Love is the fourth studio album by
the Pogues, released in July 1989.[4]
Overview
Peace and Love continued the band's gradual departure from
traditional Irish music. It noticeably opens with a heavily
jazz-influenced track. Also, several of the songs are inspired by the city in which the Pogues were founded,
London ("
White City", "Misty Morning,
Albert Bridge", "London You're a Lady"), as opposed to
Ireland, from which they had usually drawn inspiration. Nevertheless, several notable Irish personages are mentioned, including
Ned of the Hill,
Christy Brown, whose book Down All The Days appears as a song title, and
Napper Tandy, mentioned in the first line of "Boat Train", which was adapted from a line in the Irish rebel song "
The Wearing of the Green". Likewise the MacGowan song "Cotton Fields" draws on the
Lead Bellysong of the same name.
Mark Deming of
AllMusic said that Peace and Love "isn't as good as the two Pogues albums that preceded it", but felt that "it does make clear that
MacGowan was hardly the only talented songwriter in the band".[4]Robert Christgau, on the other hand, believed that "Shane MacGowan will remain the only Pogue in the down-and-out hall of fame".[5]
David Jordan - producer on "Star of the County Down"[16]
Paul Scully - producer on "Star of the County Down"[16]
Additional information
The album carried a dedication to "the memory of the 95 people who died at
Hillsborough Football Ground". The reason for this apparent anomaly is that at the time of the album's release the disaster's eventual 96th victim Tony Bland was still being kept alive on life support at
Airedale General Hospital in Keighley, West Yorkshire where he would eventually die on 3 March 1993.[17]
The boxer on the cover has
six fingers on his right hand. The boxer was British Empire Games, later changed to the Commonwealth Games, bronze winner, Hugh Cameron. The fifth finger was added by sleeve designer, Simon Ryan, to accommodate the word "PEACE".