Are The Pogues still The Pogues without Shane MacGowan? It seems a question not just for us, but one the rest of the band set out to answer on this rare and emotional pre-Christmas outing in Dublin. The answer they seem to have landed on is, in fact, a clever one: in the absence of Shane, they serve up a long and enthralling chain of guest vocalists each with their own quirky take on the band’s hits, with none looking to ape MacGowan.

As well as the guest singers, The Pogues band is expanded by guest musicians including Tom Coll (Fontaines DC) on drums, but Spider Stacy is rooted at the heart of it all. Occasionally on vocals himself, Stacy plays the foil to the guests, an enigmatic presenter of sorts whose tin whistle interludes weave heavily through The Pogue’s sound.

The setlist is, with the odd exception, their debut album ‘Red Roses For Me’, performed with an energy that belies the idea that anyone in this band had a hit record 40 years ago. The accompanying vocalists are something of a who’s who of the modern Irish folk-adjacent music scene, and a number of them particularly stand out.

Lankum’s Ian Lynch, hidden beneath his Adidas hoodie, offers a snarling run through of ‘Greenland Whale Fisheries’. Stick In The Wheel’s London-accented ‘Dark Streets of London’, is a beautifully melodic nod to that other side of The Pogue’s heritage. Junior Brother’s Kerry drawl is the perfect lilt for ‘Sea Shanty’, and Nadine Shah’s version of ‘The Auld Triangle’ is slow, powerful, and devastatingly haunting.  The Mary Wallopers appearance on a biting, boisterous version of ‘Waxie’s Dargle’ evokes particular chaos.

These natural connections are a theme, in fact: there’s been serious effort and skill put in to lining up the various guest vocalists, most of whom get no more than three minutes on stage, with a song that best fits their style. As a result the show flows incredibly naturally. Down the front, the pogoing commences almost from the off, and reaches crescendos of crowd surfing and slam-dancing that seem to evoke real emotion in Stacy in particular, who at one point crouches to the stage and holds his hands to his eyes.

There are beautiful mellow corners, too: in addition to Shah’s epic highlight, New Yorker Jim Scalvunos on ‘And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ offers just the sorrowful depth required. Naturally, ‘Irish Rovers’ offers a punchy farewell to a show that also features plenty of references of support for Palestine from participants, and is played out in front of a Palestinian flag.

The encore though, is The Pogues at their most truly beautiful. MacGowan’s wife Victoria Mary Clarke appears on stage clutching a rose, and talks about how she expected to find the night emotional – perhaps even too emotional to attend – but instead found a band playing just as well as when she first saw them way back in 1982. She talks of Shane watching over them, and pays tribute to the other members.

We’re treated to a version of ‘Fairytale of New York’, minimised to a couple of verses from the Wallopers’ Charles Hendy and Lankum’s Radie Peat, and finished with a beautiful instrumental as fake snow falls from the stage roof. ‘Dirty Old Town’ looks like a closer, with the stage crammed with the 20 plus musicians who have taken part throughout the night, all set to bow and walk off after a stark run-through of the classic.

The highlight of the night, however, is unquestionably Grian Chatten of Fontaine DC’s rendition of ‘Streams of Whiskey’. A simple drinking song that manages to root its wild abandon in the life of Brendan Behan, Chatten’s vocals on the track feel almost eerily like a carefree reinvention of MacGowan’s, delivered like a gut punch to a pogoing audience. It’s clear even the band realise how good it is as Stacy seeks out Chatten to repeat the trick at the end of the encore.

A chunk of the audience have already exited the 3Arena at what appears to be the set’s close before Chatten is ushered back to the front for another run though, the icing on what turned out to be one euphorically wonderful cake. You can’t replace MacGowan. The Pogues seem to have made a deliberate choice not to try to, and this way of playing seems to be a great compromise when it comes to respecting what they used to be without ushering in anyone who could be labelled a ‘replacement’.

As far as tributes go, this is both considered and clever,  emotional, and somehow – not just for that song, but throughout – feels an awful lot like Christmas. It will live long in the memory.