Wafer-thin mint? You might think, after the excavations of 2013’s Fisherman’s Box, that Mike Scott had trawled the ocean floor of the Fisherman’s Blues sessions. But, as expansive as it was, the box was restricted to a chronological inspection of Scott’s evolution in the years 1986-1988. Back then, thanks to an early digital process involving Betamax tape, the recording never stopped. Enough was never enough.
The shorthand version of the Fisherman’s Blues story recounts a voyage from the epic rock of Scott’s Big Music toward the sweet pipings of Irish trad. In fact, the music was more cosmopolitan than that, absorbing influences from all over. Fisherman’s Box included a disc on which the Memphis Sanctified Singers rubbed…
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…unreleased music from the ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ sessions, plus revelatory live versions of ‘And a Bang On the Ear’ and Dylan’s ‘New Morning’.
With their cross-pollination of literate, soulful rock & roll and folk traditions of the British Isles, the Waterboys have tread a multitude of musical paths since singer/songwriter Mike Scott formed the group in London in the early ’80s. From the grandiose “Big Music” of their early classic, This Is the Sea through the rich Celtic-inspired folk-rock of their 1988 highlight, Fisherman’s Blues, the mercurial Scotsman has made dramatic sea changes a regular occurrence, swapping lineups and chasing stylistic whims on an almost album-to-album basis. Across nearly four decades of work, Scott’s sonic and spiritual explorations have been shared by literally dozens of bandmembers, though only fiddler Steve Wickham (and to some extent early mainstay Antony Thistlethwaite) has maintained…