Great Scott
The Waterboys conclude their eclectic, electric trilogy, while Cuban/ American band The Mavericks offer passion and drama
POP The Waterboys: Good Luck, Seeker
Cooking Vinyl
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Erasure: The Neon
Mute
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The Mavericks: En Español
Mono Mundo Recordings
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Callum Easter: Green Door Sessions
Moshi Moshi
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Who knows if lockdown has impacted much on Mike Scott. The ever-engaged chief of The Waterboys remains absorbed in his own trip on his latest “almost accidental” album,
Good Luck, Seeker. Envisaged as the end of the eclectic, electric trilogy begun with Out of All This Blue and Where the Action Is, the album came together spontaneously in Scott’s home studio with recorded contributions fired over the wires by trusty wingmen Steve Wickham and Brother Paul.
Like its predecessors, it’s an odd blend of freewheeling jamming and studio processing techniques, with Scott indulging his maximalist tendencies on carefree cut-and-paste creations which, to fall back on the old faint praise, were probably a lot of fun to put together.
Scott continues to pay tribute to his inspirations – James Brown on the overly slick rhythm’n’blues of
The Soul Singer, Dennis Hopper on the eponymous playful tribute to the cinematic renegade (though the music is strictly straightsville) and The Rolling Stones on processed blues rock instrumental Sticky
Fingers – while he reworks his 1997 cover of Kate Bush’s Why Should I
Love You with alacrity. Best by far of this first half smorgasbord is
Low Down in the Broom, an urgent, souped-up arrangement of a Scottish folk tune.
The second half of the album – side two for vinyl fans – is given over to a largely spoken word spiritual odyssey, weaving elements of previous Waterboys works around quotations from mystical writings. Scott uses a sample from The Unthanks collaboration with Brighouse & Rastrick Brass Band for the basis of the title track, but applies a distracting shuffle beat to the noble swell of backtracked brass. However, he and his fellow travellers summon a cathartic spirit to the semi-autobiograpical blowout My Wanderings in the Weary Land.
Erasure are also immersed in wellworn preoccupations on their latest album, The Neon – “a beautiful light to be bathed in” redolent of fairgrounds, nightclubs and other symbols of leisure and escapism.
Conceived as an optimistic counterpoint to 2017 album World
Be Gone, it begins with the relatively extrovert Hey Now (Think I Got A
Feeling), about finding yourself at home in a new location, and makes explicit its love affair with analogue synthesizers on Nerves of Steel.
Ultimately, The Neon is not much of a party, as Vince Clarke explores the darker tones of his keyboard armoury to create a bittersweet or melancholic backdrop to a pretty pedestrian collection of songs.
In contrast, the first Spanish language album from The Mavericks is all passion, drama and dynamism, dressed in musical clothes which are a natural fit for the Miami-based Cuban-american band, from the soulful, soaring mariachi trumpet and powerhouse vocals of La Sitiera to the symphonic Tex Mex spirit of Me
Olvide de Vivir.
These classic Latino covers are complemented by originals from frontman Raul Malo, ranging from the mighty salsa of Recuerdo svia the slow dance syncopated sashay of Mujer to the border rock’n’roll of Suspiro Azul. Muy bien.
Edinburgh-based Callum Easter is one of the most singular musical voices to emerge from Scotland in recent years with a constantly evolving DIY sound. Of late, he has added charity shop-bought accordion to his repertoire, which he feeds through a sub harmonic generator to haunting effect.
Green Door Sessions, recorded at the titular Glasgow studio, features new accordion-laced versions of previously released Easter material, recorded in one take with no overdubs. It can be a bare, desolate sound, never more so than the looped wounded wheeze of Fall
Down, but Easter exudes something of an old soul via the mournful combination of accordion, lonesome whistling and his beautifully bruised voice on Lonely World, while the lo-fi swagger of Pop Goes the Weasel and lean blues mantra Feelings Gone vary the palette.
The Neon is not much of a party, as Vince Clarke explores the darker tones of his keyboard armoury