Album reviews: The Waterboys | Jack White

Mike Scott of The Waterboys | Colm Henry

placeholder image — Mike Scott of The Waterboys | Colm Henry

A new triple-album box set of previously unheard Waterboys material from the late 1980s shows the band at the peak of their powers, writes Fiona Shepherd

The Waterboys: Atlantic Rain: The Lost Fisherman’s Blues Recordings (Chrysalis Records) ★★★★★

Jack White: Frozen Charlotte (Third Man Records) ★★★

Finn Wolfhard: Fire From the Hip (AWAL) ★★★★

With two albums and a 7-CD boxset already out there, you might think that The Waterboys had milked every last drop of potential from Fisherman’s Blues, their most celebrated work. Then consider that during the phenomenally fertile sessions which birthed the original 1988 album, Mike Scott and his band of raggle taggle fellow travellers recorded close to 400 reels of music, a veritable vault of material which Scott has re-opened over the last couple of years to curate this new triple-album box set of previously unheard material.

Even a cursory listen to the opening Too Close to Heaven (soul version) banishes any concerns about diminishing returns. Opening with a soulful riff, this iteration of the classic track is more Blues Brothers than Fisherman’s Blues, pierced by Scott’s testifying falsetto. Likewise, it seems unthinkable that the mighty nine-minute Celtic soul epic Come Back to Galway has never had a home before.

Scott takes his time on the sleek, philosophical pop/rock of Endless Store, accompanied by pounding piano and melancholic fiddle. The Man with the Wind at his Heels is equally epic, slowly pushing skywards, while Light Shine On Me is another unheard Celt-pop gem, glinting in the treasure chest. The remarkable, rip-roaring I Can’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore is pure gospel hoedown. And onwards in style and vision, through the Stonesy No Expectations and rockabilly Honky Tonkin’, from full throttle The Good Ship Sirius Full Sail to the sultry, brazenly Dylanesque Mister Saxman. There is even a touch of dub reggae on soaring instrumental The Waves.

Cover versions are an intrinsic part of the Fisherman’s Blues currency, from a skiffly This Land Is Your Land to a loose, loping take on Hank Williams’ Lost Highway. The over-familiar Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door is fitted with leavening mandolin riffing, Willie Nelson’s Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground is re-imagined as an 80s AOR strut, while Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band starts unassumingly enough but spools out across 13 minutes, much of it devoted to a jam on Hey Jude, with enough left in the tank for a seven-minute reprise.

Truly, this was a band at the peak of their powers, freewheeling yet focused, fuelled by camaraderie, touched by genius, and now poised for another go on the swings, as spirited fiddler Steve Wickham rejoins the band for the Fisherman’s Blues Revue, coming to an arena near you this autumn.

Jack White attacks his latest album with his usual verve but without the surprise or diversity of previous offerings. Frozen Charlotte, named after a traditional doll figurine, references classic rock galore as White rages in a general sort of way with the backing of a trusty power trio. There is universality and timelessness to his bewilderment on Nobody Knows, a grand guignol album highlight with a ragged garage streak. The sense of alienation continues on All Alone Again (“feel like a magician but the trick’s on me”) on which he suggests torching the haystack to find the needle. Thick As Thieves is nimble and exultant but for once White is starting to sound like the sum of his influences.

Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard is already a prodigious polymath at the age of 23 - actor, director, musician. His second solo album is a charming half hour of slacker rock with elements of low-slung garage, bubblegum pop, 80s indie and rootsy rock scattered throughout. Best of all are the country inflections on The Climb and the ambling Lights Go Down which layers on soused bluegrass fiddle, sweet backing vocals, Hammond organ and pedal steel to invoke the spirit of Gram Parsons.

CLASSICAL

Bruckner: Symphony No 4 “Romantic” (Warner Classics) ★★★★★

Bruckner is so often the recipient of bad press, his massive symphonies wrongly dismissed as long-winded or repetitive. The problem lies invariably with dull performances, which this inspired recording of the Fourth Symphony - the “Romantic” - by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under its music director Nathalie Stutzmann abundantly illustrates. It’s a triumph of proportions, Bruckner’s protracted architecture matched not just by an organic sequencing of the inner detail, but an uncommon lyrical spirit that smooths and powers the momentum. The fact that Stutzmann began her career as a singer is perhaps relevant here, no more so than in the luxurious song-like warmth of the casual Andante. Yet her grasp of of the macro-structure is all-consuming, cumulative and magisterial, the outer movements thrillingly Gothic, the Scherzo refreshing for its rustic charm. “Bruckner’s music gives us a vast frame of reference across musical periods,” states Stutzmann. She then proves it conclusively. Ken Walton

FOLK

Simon Kempston: A Poet or a Painter (Self-portrait Records) ★★★★

“I never claimed perfection. I’m not even close / Upon further self-reflection, I’m as helpless as it shows,” sings singer-songwriter Simon Kempston in Hold On, the first in his latest clutch of songs which tend, indeed, towards introspection or heartfelt declaration. He delivers them in his characteristically intimate tenor, sometimes tremulous with yearning or regret, but carried by his fine fingerpicking and, here, by a quintet including saxophonist Sam Irvine and fiddler Robbie Greig. There’s a slinky bossa rhythm and faintly tongue-in-cheek reproach to Oh Cathy. Elsewhere, the wry ballad of Bowl Me Over sees Kempston nicely complemented by backing singer Emily Barr and Greig’s fiddle heightens the forlorn confessional of the title track. To Mind the Herd, with its sighs of slide guitar lacing imploring vocals, is a conundrum – an incitement to religion or a rational counterblast? Whatever, it’s classic, reflective Kempston. Jim Gilchrist.

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