Sparkling double album from The Waterboys
As more and more people listen to music by tapping on their phone, some are saying that the album will soon be obsolete. A self-respecting band can react in one of two ways: releasing songs one at a time, as Coldplay have lately, to rack up zillions of streams – or sticking two fingers up to tomorrow.
Mike Scott, the man behind and in front of The Waterboys, has made his new album a double, running to 23 tracks. Which is like putting out a triple LP back in the day.
The obvious danger is self-indulgence. There’s a bit of that here, with one track that’s mostly a fiddle solo, and another ominously entitled Hiphopstrumental 4 (Scatman). But before you get to those, you find Scott on top form. His last album, Modern Blues, from 2015, was a satisfying record which put him back in the Top 20 after a 22-year gap, and
Out Of All This Blue has the same genial swagger. It’s about love, like so many albums – but this is later-life love, no less romantic, just a lot more lived-in. It’s a triumph of both hope and experience.
If the secret of a long career is having a clear identity while still springing surprises, Scott lays on a masterclass. The Waterboys’ classic sound is Celtic pop-rock-folk but it’s highly elastic. There are backing tracks here that could be Thin Lizzy, the Stylistics, early Bowie, even Peter Sarstedt. The lyrics, by contrast, are all Scott’s own. Once the editor of a fanzine, he has a real writer’s voice, vivid and involving. He waxes nostalgic on Didn’t We Walk On Water, philosophical on Do We Choose Who We Love, and seductive on about half these songs. Even when he’s in chat-up mode, you want to hear what he’s got to say. Like many a rock star, he has a tendency to make a myth of himself but there’s a redeeming wit too.
‘I’m one part psychedelic gypsy, three parts blue-eyed refugee,’ he sings at one point. ‘My soul is in Memphis but my ass is in Nashville, Tennessee.’
If you can face a double album, this one’s a bargain at €16.99. And if you can’t, there are tracks – Love Walks In, Morning Came Too Soon, If I Was Your Boyfriend – that will add class to any playlist. The Waterboys are performing in the 3Arena in Dublin on October 26.