Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
KIND OF BLUE
The Waterboys
With it’s heady melding of hip-hop funk and soul influences, love songs as impassioned and unbridled as any in Mike Scott’s canon, Out Of All This Blue is surely The Waterboys’ most daring release to date.
The bands 12th studio release is a reinvention of their sound – an experimental record born out of a mixture of circumstance and necessity.
“Usually when we go into the studio we’ve done a tour we’ve built up funds that pay for the recordings,” Scott explains.
“Although we had done a great tour in 2015 we looked at the books when we got back and while we weren’t in the red, we weren’t in the black either and there was no money to make a record.
“So I had a couple of choices I could wait until the next summer season, earn some money and then record or just start recording at home.
“The songs were coming too thick and fast for me to wait so
I just started recording at home.”
Out Of All This Blue feels totally different to anything that has preceded it – much of that is down to Scott’s own experimentation with field recordings and
DIY production techniques.
iphone recordings from
Scott’s travels to Japan are littered throughout – quiet chatter with his wife found at the end of Didn’t We Walk On
Water and recordings of a train crossing in Tokyo are heard elsewhere.
Much of the album was mixed at home using Garage band (Apple’s music production software) a Pro Tools interface and K Rock speakers.
The use of sampling and hip-hop loops are a stark example of Scott’s most recent influences.
“Kendrick Lamar is a big favourite of mine and a new cat coming out of Los
Angeles called
Anderson Paak, he’s a kind of singing rapping drummer.
I would have also been listening to a lot of late 60’s early 70’s funk and soul music, people like Curtis
Mayfield, (circled) Aretha Franklin Marvin Gaye that’s what I listen to at home.
“I started working with loops, and began really working more with the songs as song writing demos, he told The Beat.
“But they were coming out too good and when I started putting hip-hop loops on them I loved the sound I was getting and I just continued.
A major influence for much of the double album was Scott’s wife Megumi Igarashi (right).
He first heard about his wife through newspaper coverage of her campaign against Japanese authorities over her controversial artworks.
Scott supported Megumi Igarashi during a court case in which she was found guilty of breaking Japan’s obscenity laws for crafting sculptures inspired by the vagina.
She is the inspiration for much of the love songs that appear towards the end of the record.
Yamaben is about a lawyer who represented her during her court case. “She had this very publicised court case which had been covered in the west which is how I first found about her,” he says.
“She had a legal team in Japan who worked on her case pro bono and she was incredibly grateful to them for it.
“Very early in our relationship she came to me and asked to write a song about her lawyer Yamaben.
Yam is short for his surname, Yamaguchi, and Ben is short for Bengoshi, Japanese for lawyer.
So he’s Yama-ben.
“I didn’t know him but I liked him as a character so I got her to send me over some material on who he was, and what he was about.
“She sent me a list in an email from Japan and I stayed up all night one night at my place in Dublin and made the track – the chorus of which is influenced by The Rolling Stones’ Starf**ker.”
Reminiscent of Alex Turner in terms of delivery on songs such as Mister Charisma – a tribute to Kieth Richards – he has also managed to insert some of the wit into his lyrics which is something of a frontier.
Take for example Hammerhead bar, a song about Legendary bassist for The Who, John Entwhistle’s bar in his country mansion, it features a monologue in the intro which is a spoof of the Psychedelic Shack by The Temptations.
While the production techniques and at times gaudy 4-4 dance beats may throw some Waterboys fans, Scott’s lyrical ability is once again to the fore throughout.
Out Of All This Blue is yet another bold step into the unknown for a band who have shown a willingness to meld musical styles since their formation.
The Waterboys play Dublin’s 3Arena on Friday October the 26.
’She is the inspiration for much of the love songs that appear towards the end of the record.’