Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Music Review: The Waterboys - Fisherman's Blues

Full article first published as Music Review: The Waterboys - Fisherman's Blues on Blogcritics.

Here is a brief excerpt of the review:
But I come here not to damn The Waterboys for their eccentric inconsistencies; rather, I come to praise them for a tremendous album. Fisherman’s Blues (1988) has a sawdust-on-wood-floor, backroom-of-the-pub feel that transcends the dreary 1980s, a droning era of tortured hair and angsty hermaphrodites. In fact, it is an album that defies the soulless in-synth-sibilities of that senseless decade, and draws deeply from the well of roots music with an eclectic mix of inspirations: Irish/Scottish traditional music, country-western, 60s folk, and even some of the grandiose rock sound from This is the Sea. It is an album both out of time with its epoch and timeless in its rustic appeal.

Mike Scott (expanding on the sleeve notes he wrote for the CD remaster of the album) stated, “Fisherman’s Blues was made in 1986-88, a period when third generation rock musicians, having learned their trade listening to 1960s and 70s pop or rock music, and finding themselves remote from the original roots of rock itself, went in search of a deeper resonance, a deeper grounding.” Nowhere is that sentiment better realized than on Fisherman’s Blues, an album steeped in tradition, yet brimming with the vitality of newfound revelation.


Go to Blogcritics for the rest. Enjoy!

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