The Waterboys – Good Luck, Seeker
Cooking Vinyl – Out Now
You’d have to go to a compilation album to find a set of songs with such a variety of genres as this release. The impressive thing is how well and authentically the band (or Mike Scott, who essentially is the band) produces them.
It starts with The Soul Singer and one of my couplets of the year:
“He gets away with being rude, ‘coz everyone’s scared of his quicksilver moods, the soul singer. He’s been around for fifty years; every crease on his face is a souvenir, the soul singer.”
It paints such a vivid picture, shows the humour that fills the song, and scans beautifully while it’s at it. And this is only 35 seconds into the album. The whole song has a tongue-in-cheek tone. It says to me that Mike Scott has a particular singer in mind (or at least it’s a composite – and having worked with legendary Muscle Shoals bassist David Hood, he’s doubtless heard about a few). The music that accompanies it is a wonderful match, a serious parody of soul music tropes.
When he follows it up with the feline (You’ve Got to) Kiss a Frog or Two, you start imagining that there’s a mirror ball above, as the disco-meter shoots up to ten.
Starting with a revving motorcycle, as a nod to the cult film classic Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper is a genuine tribute to an actor whose work ethic Scott admires. That tongue-in-cheek humour still comes through as he gets every line to rhyme with ‘Hopper’ – and without particularly straining any crowbars to manage it. We get a clear portrait of the man in the opening lines:
“Dude with a ‘tache on a chariot chopper
Reb’ without a cause, man, what a showstopper
He was present at the birth of the teenybopper.”
Then he adds a line for in-the-know musos: “His suit’s as slick as a lick by Cropper.” All this is done with a slinky groove that suits the vocal rhythms.
As if he needs a break from all this creative energy, he saves himself some effort by covering Why Should I Love You, where Kate Bush and Prince have done the hard work and he just has to re-arrange it. Sonically, it sits very comfortably with his own tracks here, and he puts more energy into the song than the version on Bush’s The Red Shoes.
This eclectic approach is a Waterboys trend from the last few years. If soul, disco, hip-hop, rock and folk is not enough, Scott’s vocals on the funky The Golden Work, a song lyrically adapted from the writings of British poet, novelist, playwright and theologian Charles Williams, are fully autotuned.
The quality dips occasionally: Freak Street consists mainly of vocals over a brash drum rhythm with sound effects behind it all. If it were missed off, it wouldn’t be missed.
Strangely though, the 46-second Sticky Fingers – a tribute to the Stones, even though it sounds nothing like them – does earn its brief stay. It is highly organ-based, so perhaps that’s some kind of style innuendo…
This is deliberately an album of two halves. The second half is all spoken word over a variety of rhythms. The first of these is My Wanderings in the Weary Land, where his exultant exclamations match the urgency of the compelling, strutting rock guitar chords behind it. The song is essentially the band’s earlier The Return of Jimi Hendrix, but this version makes that sound like a demo. Apparently, these new lyrics are from the liner notes to the A Rock in a Weary Land album. It’s one of the most exhilarating pieces here, taking off soon after he has exclaimed, “This place is love’s fortress – and so am I!” So no wonder it was the lead track in promoting the album. Steve Wickham’s end soloing does hark back to some of the higher octane work in Fisherman’s Blues, but it feels more intense in this seven-minute gem.
Talking of that folk masterpiece, you may ask, “Where is the folk, then?” He does get closer with Low Down in the Broom, a re-imagined traditional folk ballad. Here, he does to folk what he’s just done to soul and disco, Scottifying it. But there is a treated rawness, a contemporary edge that purists may dislike. Near the end, his wild vocals almost out-Dylan Dylan.
Folk gets distorted to an unrecognisable degree on the title track, where a reversed The Unthanks instrumental with the Brighouse And Rastrick Brass Band gets a hip-hop beat as a backing. It has been part of the Waterboys’ pre-show music for some years now. The vocal is Scott reading a piece by occultist Dion Fortune, spoken almost in a clipped 1940’s BBC news accent.
Postcard from the Celtic Dreamtime glides over a silky groove, but there is still recognisable fiddle work threaded throughout. It also has a direct link to Fisherman’s Blues. Begun at the same time as that album, it conjures up images of the Clare coast bay-scape, with the Arran islands in the distance and “pantheons of clouds… like ships, white galleons… a slow procession of old guards passing by”.
Scott does a similar thing on the final track, The Land of Sunset, where his attention turns to the countryside around the Mendips. This time, the beats – the great musical thread that injects some cohesion into a wildly eclectic album – ride over some soft keys work.
These give a nod to another of this album’s great strengths: Mike Scott is a superb wordsmith. If The Soul Singer wasn’t enough of a clue, where every line feels crafted, the lyrics across the album exude a mix of storytelling, spirituality, wit, passion and poetry. It would be criminal if this weren’t nominated for the next Mercury prize, but it could also be a terrific source for an ‘A’ Level music course or even an English one.
If all this talk of words is making you hungry for more from The Soul Singer, I’ll give you a little treat.
“He’s spent the best part of three decades brooding under a pair of shades.” Delicious.