The Waterboys have a very different take on merging rock music with Irish folk than The Pogues do (and Scottish folk as well; they’re more “Celtic” than any specific modern nationality). This is cleaner, less steerage class, more WB Yeats than Roddy Doyle.
It’s hard to say who has the more iconic Eighties violin riff - Steve Wickham’s work on the title track Fisherman’s Blues or Helen O’Hara of Dexys Midnight Runners on Come On Eileen. Both are instantly recognisable. Wickham also provides a simple repeated rhythmic motif that drives the track We Will Not Be Lovers for its seven-plus minute runtime, while Strange Boat is a lovely ballad. World Party is quite funky, co-written by Karl Wallinger who by this stage had left the Waterboys, taking the name of this track with him for the name of his own group. This sounds like a World Party (the band) song as well.
Sweet Thing is a cover of a Van Morrison song, Mike Scott’s hoarse vocals more to my tastes than Morrison’s more nasal tones and shows how there are some good songs under the superficial elements (I don’t like it if a book is printed in an unpleasant font either, I’m that kind of person). Has Anybody Here Seen Hank?, about Hank Williams, is a bit of a lonesome waltz where Scott’s vocals sound Dylanesque, matched by a snippet of Woody Guthrie at the end.
Towards the end of the album, the group veer closer and closer to pure folk rather than folk-adjacent contemporary music, with the traditional tune When Will We Be Married, while A Bang On The Ear is a long ballad in the traditional Celtic style. The album closes with the delicate and beautiful flute-backed song The Stolen Child, fusing myths about children stolen by the faeries with the reality of losing a child; this one featuring spoken word Yeats (see, I knew I hadn’t pulled that reference from thin air).
It’s all quite lovely. If you feel, like me, that the track Fisherman’s Blues could be longer, there’s a cover version by Australian bush band The Handsome Strangers that drags the violin solo out for a few more minutes and is worth tracking down.
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