Waiting for Herb

The album saw the band continue to expand their musical reach past the traditional Irish roots it had been founded on, and was only their second full-length album without a single traditional song. The album featured the track "Tuesday Morning", which was the band's first Top Twenty hit since "Fairytale of New York."

With MacGowan departed, his singing and songwriting duties fell to the other members. While Spider Stacy took the role of lead vocalist, much of the songwriting fell to Jem Finer, who along with Terry Woods had previously been the most prolific songwriter apart from MacGowan. However, the album saw contributions by other members who had not written songs for the band previously, including James Fearnley, Andrew Ranken, and Darryl Hunt. Ranken also sang lead vocals on "My Baby's Gone".

The song "Smell of Petroleum", with its refrain "The secret of the universe is hidden in this song", references the following anecdote from Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy:

William James describes a man who got the experience from laughing-gas; whenever he was under its influence, he knew the secret of the universe, but when he came to, he had forgotten it. At last, with immense effort, he wrote down the secret before the vision had faded. When completely recovered, he rushed to see what he had written. It was: "A smell of petroleum prevails throughout."

It was the last Pogues album to feature Terry Woods, James Fearnley and Philip Chevron, all of whom left the group after the album's release.

The Pogues

• Spider Stacy - vocals
• Jem Finer - banjo, soprano saxophone, hurdy-gurdy, guitar, pachinko, backing vocals
• James Fearnley - accordion, dulcimer, guitar, piano, harmonica, clarinet, banjo
• Andrew Ranken - drums
• Philip Chevron - guitar, backing vocals
• Terry Woods - vocals, mandolin, concertina, cittern, banjo, bazouki
• Darryl Hunt - bass, backing vocals
• David Coulter - percussion, ukulele, foghorn

with:

• Michael Brook - guitar, keyboards, mixing, engineer, producer
• Debsey Wykes - vocals
• James Pinker - percussion
• Hijaz Mustapha - strings

Technical

• Richard Evans - engineer, mixing
• Nick Robbins - engineer
• Russell Kearney - assistant engineer
• Tony Cousins - mastering

• Boston Irish Reporter on the Pogues after Shane