Waterboys – Fisherman’s Blues …album review

I’ve listened to this album before, but this week I had it on constantly, and I went through it many times. Not one clunker on this album. It’s one of those albums that is hard to pick just one song off and go with it. It needs to be listened to as a whole. I was just going to go with the song World Party but I kept listening to track after track and decided to go with the entire album. You have all kinds of musical styles on this album, including a tribute song about Hank Williams called Has Anybody Here Seen Hank?. It has something for everyone, but blended into one cohesive album voice. 

The impression I get from this album is The Basement Tapes by Dylan and The Band. Not comparing songs, no, just the freedom feel of the entire album. It sounds like they didn’t plan anything, and it just happened. When you pull that off, it’s pure magic. Not many albums are truly spontaneous, but when you get that feeling, bottle it quickly, because it doesn’t come often. 

The Waterboys were formed in 1983 by Scottish musician Mike Scott, the band’s leader and primary songwriter. Over the years, their music has evolved through various phases, blending elements of rock, folk, and Celtic influences. Fisherman’s Blues was the title track of their album released in 1988. 

Mike Scott recorded over 100 songs during this period. Only 13 made the cut for this album, and he made a good selection. This album helped inspire a wave of folk-rock revivalists in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and later on bands like Mumford and Sons. Mike Scott has said that Fisherman’s Blues was not one sound but a voyage, not a destination, but a process.

The album had a little of everything, like spirit, freedom, risk, and reinvention. It’s the sound of a band trying something new and getting lost in something older, wilder, and more timeless. It’s one of those rare albums where you feel like you’ve lived with the band. I’m going to go song by song…just listen to this album!

All the songs except for two covers (Sweet Thing by Van Morrison and This Land Is Your Land by Woody Guthrie) and a song called Dunford’s Fancy written by violinist Steve Wickham  were either written or co-written by Mike Scott. 

Karl Wallinger, who co-wrote World Party and was a key part of the early Waterboys, left during these sessions to form his own band, named World Party. I picked that song “World Party” below to highlight, plus the entire album on Spotify. What caught me was that it explodes out of the speakers with a honky-tonk style piano and a fiddle sawing like a buzzsaw through a barn wall. It’s hard not to like that. The song just makes me feel good.

The album peaked at #15 in New Zealand, #76 on the Billboard Album Charts, and #13 in the UK in 1988.

Mike Scott: We started recording our fourth album in early ’86 and completed it 100 songs and 2 years later. There was a lot of indecision. I got too involved in the album and I lost perspective. We had blues songs, gospel songs, country songs, rock songs and ballads. I didn’t know where to take it. It could’ve been a gospel or country album. It could’ve sounded more like This Is the Sea or it could’ve been a traditional album. It could’ve been anything.”

The tracklist to the original album

Fisherman’s Blues (Mike Scott, Steve Wickham)
We Will Not Be Lovers (Scott) – 7:03
Strange Boat (Scott, Anthony Thistlethwaite)
World Party (Scott, Trevor Hutchinson, Karl Wallinger)
Jimmy Hickey’s Waltz (Scott, Wickham, Thistlethwaite)
And a Bang on the Ear (Scott, Wickham, Thistlethwaite)
Has Anybody Here Seen Hank? (Scott)
When Will We Be Married? (Traditional, adapted: Scott, Thistlethwaite)
When Ye Go Away (Scott)
Dunford’s Fancy (Wickham)
The Stolen Child (Words: W.B. Yeats, Music: Scott)
This Land Is Your Land (Woody Guthrie)

World Party

Well it’s got nothing to do with anything that is realyou just believe in it and it’s trueYou can sooth like an angel or sigh like a saintyou can dream it and see it throughYou will live to see a sea of lightssparking on the face of a pearlClimb your own peakfind a new streak

Get yourself along to the world party (party!)

Now you’ve been building for yourself a cool place in the sandyou’re thinking that it’s mighty fineYou’ve got dust in your eyeballs, you got mud in your mouthbut it’s your head, it ain’t mineI’ve got a madman of my own to contend withcursing in the cave of my skullTurn the other cheekfind a new streak

Get yourself along to the world party (party!)

Well I heard a rumour of a golden agesomewhere back along the lineMaybe I dreamed it in a whisper orheard it in a spellIt was something to do with the sign of the timesand the only thing that I rememberIs a summer like a pretty girlwho shimmers and shinesMoving in timeshaking to the beat of the heart of the world

Party (party! party! party! party! party! party! party! party! party!)

…

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

42 thoughts on “Waterboys – Fisherman’s Blues …album review”

  4. From the samples I could hear on the Spotify list (the tube link didn’t open for me) it sounds really good. It’s like a hybrid of Celtic instrumental with Dylan’s ‘Desire’ record.
    ‘You in the Sky’ is magnificent!

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  6. Definitely an interesting, low-fi sound with some good songs. Turns out I only knew the title track, I’ve heard several others by them but they were likely on the previous album. Seems Karl got the idea for his new band name here though. I think the comparison to the Band is fair in terms of kind of ‘rustic-ness’

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      1. Does it seem like countries that have harsh winters and landscapes do it more naturally…Canada, Ireland, Scotland, not so much California or Florida ?

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  9. Pingback: Waterboys – Fisherman’s Blues …album review – MobsterTiger

  10. loved that….I’m a sucker for the genre….their live take on Raggle Taggie Gypsy on room to room is my fave play along…next to Steve Earl doing Galway Girl with Sharon Shannon…..for some reason this morning, I’ve decided to go through my Black Sabbath vinyl, and just posted somewhere else that I prefered the Ronnie James Dio era and pissed off a lot of people…I good at doing that

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    1. Yea I like this album a lot. I can’t stop playing it.
      LOL…yea I bet that would piss off a lot of people because I know some Sabbath fans.

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  12. Great album, Max, I haven’t heard in ages! I borrowed it on CD from somebody back in the ’80s and taped it on music cassette – one of the countless tapings I did back then. I ended up with more than 200 MCs!

    I still have about half of them floating around. When I left Germany to live in the U.S. in 1997, I left the rest of the cassettes at my parents’ house. I simply couldn’t take all of them. Eventually, they were thrown out or given away when my parents sold the house about 12 years ago.

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    1. Wow! That is a lot.
      Oh that sucks but at least now you have them digitally if you want to hear. I was impresssed Christian…great album!

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  14. That piano opening grabs my ear. These guys have some epic openings to their songs. They jump right in on this one.
    “I’ve got a madman of my own to contend with” This album is a bit of a keeper. It just keeps giving and I’ve listened to it countless times.

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    1. Man…I’m hooked on it. I listened to it over and over and over again. Every song is an adventure. Like I said…it sounds so loose but it’s tight.

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      2. CB…the thing that impressed me the most and I said it the best I could…was it didn’t sound rehearsed at all but yet it was so tight…it was like they played all of the tracks live. That is why I compared it to the Basement Tapes…not musically but the feel.

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