Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Melody Maker	very favourable
Mojo	(2004 reissue)
NME	very favourable
Q	(1994 reissue)
Q	(2004 reissue)
Record Mirror
Robert Christgau	B+
Sounds

Red Roses for Me is the debut studio album by the London-based band The Pogues and was released in October 1984. It is filled with traditional Irish music performed with punk influences. The band's approach of mixing traditional songs and ballads with frontman Shane MacGowan's "gutter hymns" about drinking, fighting and sex was innovative at the time. The title "Red Roses for Me" is the name of a play by Seán O'Casey, though his works do not show any direct influence upon the band. The album reached number 89 in the UK album charts.

The front of the album shows the band with the exception of drummer Andrew Ranken (pictured in inset) sitting in front of a picture of United States president John F. Kennedy. The back features Shane MacGowan pictured with his foot in a cast. Accordion player James Fearnley has a bottle sticking out of his coat, while bass player Cait O'Riordan is seen holding a can of beer.

The UK music press hailed The Pogues' début album as a breath of fresh air, with positive reviews. Melody Maker felt that "the quality of their music, even the very nature of it, is strangely irrelevant. What's important is their existence at all. For The Pogues are a gesture – a particularly bloody two-fingered one – aimed at all things considered current and fashionable in 1984... Theirs is a gut reaction to traditional music – and with it comes all the motion, intensity and vigour that has largely been lost to these songs since the early days of the folk revival in the Sixties."NME stated, "From the strummed banjo and lilting accordion that preface a roaring singalong 'Transmetropolitan' to the final unidentified voice offering an unaccompanied 'diddly I di di' refrain, there exists a wealth of evidence that Shane MacGowan's faith in the power of positive drinking-music has paid premiums. The raucous surge and evocative noise that has filled the capital's pubs and clubs has come through the stark sobriety of the studio set-up to arrive intact in all its sweat-soaked beer-stained glory... If you think they've rehabilitated a music that's been asleep for a while you're dead wrong – on both counts. The music has never been away, and The Pogues in all their irreverent 'seriousness' have taken it out on a limb, where it all started, where it belongs." Awarding the album 3¾ stars out of five, Sounds said, "Red Roses for Me is a satisfyingly impure, purposefully imperfect and totally irresistible collection of lasting resentment, rebellious roars, watery-eyed romance and uproarious jigs... Surprisingly, this record works. It manages to convey the sullied, brazen and raucous spirit of their live set very effectively." For the 1994 reissue of the album Q observed that the album "rushes along at an unholy amphetamine gallop... they sound utterly intoxicated both with their own enthusiasm and the spirit of the jig and the reel".

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Wikipedia