BY EVAN HAGA

Who knew being an enabler could be so much fun?

That's now a sort of standard line on 51-year-old Shane MacGowan, thrown around by anyone lucky enough to catch the Pogues each year when they capitalize on St. Paddy's fervor in the States. You want more? How about something comparing MacGowan to Keith Richards?

On this night, the last of three dates the band played at Washington, D.C.'s 9:30 Club, the more appropriate analogy might have been a recent Bob Dylan tour. To be kind to MacGowan and cruel to Dylan, the correlations were there: an expert band fronted by a charismatic marble-mouthed poet who, never being a conventionally great singer to begin with, now delivers his ageless lyrics in an incomprehensible warble; the crowd a mix of diehards who hold the gig with spiritual reverence and newcomers who think it a fine place to get wasted.

Truth is, MacGowan was on his (relative) game and, even if his slurred between-song chatter was met with mocking guffaws, the proceedings seemed less exploitative than usual. (His swilling and spilling was kept to a bare minimum; he was a mess but not an embarrassment.) And the band did its share to justify the hefty ticket price: Where else can you hear such finely tuned Celtic furor? Don't even say Flogging Molly.

In a roughly 90-minute set, the Pogues reeled and jigged their way through an inspired roundup of standouts, with a few surprises. There were the rave-ups: "Streams of Whiskey" and "If I Should Fall From Grace With God" formed a knockout one-two opener; "Turkish Song of the Damned," with its alloy of European and Islamic colors, sounded positively ghoulish; the accelerating instrumental "Repeal of the Licensing Laws" worked the boozy crowd into a frenzy and exercised the sizable chops of accordionist James Fearnley and tin whistle player Spider Stacy; and "Sally MacLennane" and "Body of an American" proved irresistible barroom singalongs. (The revelry got physical on an encore, "Fiesta," when Stacy and MacGowan repeatedly smashed their heads into aluminum food trays.) 

Even the slicker, weaker later-album songs took on the rawness and urgency of early singles in this live setting: "The Sunnyside of the Street" lost its layer of chipper kitsch, and "Tuesday Morning" was given some much-needed grit. (The studio version of that song, off 1993's MacGowen-less Waiting for Herb, leans toward period Britpop - tuneful but ineffectual.) 

But perhaps the most potent material - the stuff of romance and melancholy that stabilizes the debauchery - was the ballads, including a muscular read of "Dirty Old Town" and the pensive "A Pair of Brown Eyes." Sorely missing from that list was the song that helped make MacGowan the poet laureate of Irishmen real and fake, the U.K. Christmas classic "Fairytale of New York." In the reportedly boozier tours of recent years, Ella Finer, the daughter of Pogues banjoist Jem Finer, replaced the late Kirsty MacColl to duet with MacGowan on his tale of derelict love and lost dreams. Not here. 

It was a considerable omission, to say the least, but a forgivable one given the rest of this exhilarating show. In so many words, the next time they make the rounds, don't blow it.