Album: Fisherman's Blues
Artist: The Waterboys
Artist: The Waterboys
Born: Edinburgh
Released: October 1988
Genre: Folk
Influenced: U2, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Damien Rice, The Decemberists
On the back of success for the Pogues and others, Irish music enjoyed a mini-revival in the late 80s, but best of all the Celtic folk-inspired albums was Fisherman's Blues by The Waterboys. Scotsman Mike Scott was the man most responsible for the album and the band's change of direction after the success of their previous LP, This Is The Sea. Thanks to brilliant single, The Whole Of The Moon (1985), which gives a sense of the literary bent to Scott's lyrics as he sings of those who travelled "too high, too far, too soon" in pursuit of knowledge, This Is The Sea charted well and is the best expression of the band's early "big sound". The next phase was inspired by Scott's move from London to Dublin, where he met a wide array of new musicians, many of whom featured on Fisherman's Blues. In the 3-year gap between This Is The Sea and Fisherman's Blues, The Waterboys produced a huge amount of new material, some of which appeared in 2001 on Too Close To Heaven. To my mind, there's something of the flow of Dylan's Basement Tapes to the recordings, not just the easy bonhomie of the musicians but also the way Scott was a songwriter very much in tune with his muse and hugely prolific as a result. Fiddle player Steve Wickham is also prominent on the album and was a catalyst in the band's new sound, which celebrates Ireland from the bars of Dublin to the coastline of Spiddal.
The title track makes for a raucous opening and is driven along by Anthony Thistlethwaite's electric mandolin, a distinctive element of the album's sound, along with his soulful saxophone playing. Fisherman's Blues has appeared on various soundtracks and was the only song I was familiar with before first listening to the album. Themes of the sea feature a lot in Scott's songwriting, with Strange Boat another example (along with Fisherman's Blues), as Scott sings of "sailing on a strange sea / blown by a strange wind". The Waterboys also pay tribute to one of Ireland's great musical sons, Van Morrison, with a sensitive and original cover of the sublime Sweet Thing, fusing it seamlessly with The Beatles' Blackbird. Jimmy Hickey's Waltz, like Dunford's Fancy, is a soft and sweet instrumental which acts as a palette cleanser before a longer epic. In the first case it's And A Bang On The Ear and in the second it's The Stolen Child, both album highlights. The first is a modern classic of the Irish folk repertoire, and the best expression of the band's "raggle taggle gypsy" sound, while the second is an emotive musical adaptation of a W.B. Yeats poem, with a masterful vocal performance by Irish singer Tómas Mac Eoin. The album also makes nods to Hank Williams (the country-folk fusion of Has Anybody Here Seen Hank?) and Woody Guthrie (This Land Is Your Land), the latter a snippet that swaps American place names for Irish ones. You can now but a 7-CD copy of the 121 tracks that comprised all of the Fisherman Blues sessions, but this is the best place to start.
On the back of success for the Pogues and others, Irish music enjoyed a mini-revival in the late 80s, but best of all the Celtic folk-inspired albums was Fisherman's Blues by The Waterboys. Scotsman Mike Scott was the man most responsible for the album and the band's change of direction after the success of their previous LP, This Is The Sea. Thanks to brilliant single, The Whole Of The Moon (1985), which gives a sense of the literary bent to Scott's lyrics as he sings of those who travelled "too high, too far, too soon" in pursuit of knowledge, This Is The Sea charted well and is the best expression of the band's early "big sound". The next phase was inspired by Scott's move from London to Dublin, where he met a wide array of new musicians, many of whom featured on Fisherman's Blues. In the 3-year gap between This Is The Sea and Fisherman's Blues, The Waterboys produced a huge amount of new material, some of which appeared in 2001 on Too Close To Heaven. To my mind, there's something of the flow of Dylan's Basement Tapes to the recordings, not just the easy bonhomie of the musicians but also the way Scott was a songwriter very much in tune with his muse and hugely prolific as a result. Fiddle player Steve Wickham is also prominent on the album and was a catalyst in the band's new sound, which celebrates Ireland from the bars of Dublin to the coastline of Spiddal.
The title track makes for a raucous opening and is driven along by Anthony Thistlethwaite's electric mandolin, a distinctive element of the album's sound, along with his soulful saxophone playing. Fisherman's Blues has appeared on various soundtracks and was the only song I was familiar with before first listening to the album. Themes of the sea feature a lot in Scott's songwriting, with Strange Boat another example (along with Fisherman's Blues), as Scott sings of "sailing on a strange sea / blown by a strange wind". The Waterboys also pay tribute to one of Ireland's great musical sons, Van Morrison, with a sensitive and original cover of the sublime Sweet Thing, fusing it seamlessly with The Beatles' Blackbird. Jimmy Hickey's Waltz, like Dunford's Fancy, is a soft and sweet instrumental which acts as a palette cleanser before a longer epic. In the first case it's And A Bang On The Ear and in the second it's The Stolen Child, both album highlights. The first is a modern classic of the Irish folk repertoire, and the best expression of the band's "raggle taggle gypsy" sound, while the second is an emotive musical adaptation of a W.B. Yeats poem, with a masterful vocal performance by Irish singer Tómas Mac Eoin. The album also makes nods to Hank Williams (the country-folk fusion of Has Anybody Here Seen Hank?) and Woody Guthrie (This Land Is Your Land), the latter a snippet that swaps American place names for Irish ones. You can now but a 7-CD copy of the 121 tracks that comprised all of the Fisherman Blues sessions, but this is the best place to start.
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