No doubt some will approach this album as they would approach a car wreck­­that is, with morbid curiosity. Others will be seeking once again a reason to admonish Shane for not being as commonplace a bourgeois as they are, this thinly veiled under the smarmy guise of "concern." They'll all be a bit let down here; this is a solid rock album, nothing more, nothing less. It won't change your life, but it will kick your butt.

The man's voice may be shredding at the edges, but its sandpaper hiss only adds to the near-demonic fury exhibited on The Snake's leadoff track, "The Church of the Holy Spook," in which Shane excoriates the rock & roll establishment for crucifying him, leading to, among other things, "drinking, bad wives, taking pills and cursing." Having taken stock, our Irish mystic decides on a reactionary course of action: "It was good enough for Daddy / and my dear old Mammy too / Gimme that Church of the Holy Spook / I don't need nothin' new." Fair enough. Shane is totally convincing here, and who are we to argue?

The rest of the album basically boils down to rocking tracks in the "Holy Spook" vein and the "Irish stuff," as I'll call it, like the next track, a cover of the traditional "Nancy Whiskey" (about...you guess). Even though I'm of Irish descent, I often think if you've heard one whistle you've heard 'em all, but I must admit that Shane does a nice job on The Snake of pulling this stuff off with a bit looser and therefore more effective feel than was heard on the last couple of Pogues albums. That, along with the sound-alike name of his band, The Popes, must make the old gang wince a bit (although Pogues Spider Stacey and Jem Finer do appear here).

So, if Irish tunage is your thing, then tracks like "Roddy McCorley," "The Song With No Name," and "Aisling" should provide a needed fix. For my money, though, the reason to buy The Snake is the trio of downright smoking rock tunes nestled in the middle of the album: "Victoria," "That Woman's Got Me Drinking," and "A Mexican Funeral In Paris."

"Victoria" is a three-chord rocker which simultaneously recalls both The Kinks and Van Morrison, no mean trick. It also boasts one of the better lines of the year: "Victoria / left me in opium euphoria / With a fat monk singing 'Gloria' / My girl with green eyes." "Victoria" ultimately affirms the do-nothing existence, the sovereignty acquired by the man who refuses to be "useful" in a society which esteems utility: "Only you see that I am lazy / Don't care about fame / Nor money like a child...All the people are so busy / And I have nothing to bother about." This is the heart of Shane MacGowan, gutter-poet, and he's seldom put it any better.

"That Woman's Got Me Drinking" follows, nicking the bass line from Irish rock icons Them's "Gloria" as Shane details the trauma of the seven-year itch: she fell in love with him because he was a rogue, and now she treats him "just like a piece of scum" for exactly the same reason. The eternal dilemma of the rogue, this one also kicks major ass, Shane yelling on the chorus for "1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 bottles of gin" to assuage his pain. Good stuff.

My favorite of all, though, is "A Mexican Funeral In Paris." This one's a stream-of-consicousness narrative which mixes Catholicism, drugs, betrayal, identity crises and death into a potent brew worthy of Shane's hero, Martin Scorsese. The song concludes with the memorable lines, "I walked into a bar so fucking stoned / I thought I was Chiarakaparos / First time I've been, maybe not the last / To a Mexican Funeral in Paris," punctuated by a devastatingly effective horn section.

Of the rest, "Haunted" is a duet with fellow Irish singer Sinead O'Connor, a failed attempt to capture the magic of Shane's "Fairytale of New York" duet with Kirsty MacColl on the Pogues' 1988 If I Should Fall From Grace With God album. The two voices here just don't connect (Shane isn't up to it), and the chorus is a bit on the insipid side. "I'll Be Your Handbag," however, is a shit-kickin' Irish punk rocker whose title parodies the Velvets' stately "I'll Be Your Mirror," and a lyrically a classic MacGowan tour of the gutter: "Hands of the barmaid / bringing off a bald headed monk / All this and more for just one line of junk." The high and the low indeed! "Donegal Express" is a fun play on the notion of the "drink, fight, and fornicate" Irishman­­consult the lyric sheet for this tale, which might have even made that old Brit Chaucer blush!

So the score here is this: Shane's alive and kicking, and while The Snake may not fit neatly into any of the rock genres of 1995, who really gives a damn? You want social significance, call Eddie Vedder (yawn). You want to toss back a few stiff ones and hear a few tales, tall and otherwise, Shane's your man, as he always has been. It's up to you.