The Waterboys Album: “Fisherman's Blues”

I loved the original Fisherman's Blues. That album is one of my favorites from the eighties. I will not even classify it as an eighties album since it is timeless. This extended release is such a surprise, I am in awe. I believe the second disc alone is as good or even better than the original. It does not feel like outtakes or demos, it feels like a stand alone disc. The Waterboys need to release the disc that needs to be released.... The Fisherman's Blues Sessions. A four disc release consisting of all of the seesions recorded in the eighties for the Fisherman's Blues recordings. These recordings represent all that is right with music; The love of music, for music sake. There are no producers, music executives, cookie cutter money making agendas involved. We need more personal music produced today. This is so refreshing it is unbelievable. Buy this and discover music of the soul.

I first discovered this album in 1990 while I was in college and it is still a mainstay in my regular CD rotation. The Waterboys are one of the most underrated bands of the 1980's, and they produced some of the decade's most eclectic, interesting music. Fisherman's Blues is unlike any other album you will own. It has a little rock, a little soul and a little traditional Irish music. How many albums can you say have that combination? The album was recorded in Ireland and is chock full of top notch Irish instrumentalists. The band's main man, Mike Scott, is actually Scottish, but it is hard to believe it here. Songs like the title cut, When Ye Go Away and an almost note-perfect interpretation of Van Morrison's Sweet Thing are unforgettable. The album isn't totally flawless, but it has a special place in my heart, and if I get in my Irish music mood, I dig it out, mainly because a little Irish music goes a long way and there is just enough here.

It's hard to express what an album can mean to you. Although I have stacks of CD's, this is among the most cherished because it strikes a raw emotional chord in me that remains undiminished after years of listening. It ranks up there with Joni Mitchell's "Blue", Fleetwood Mac "Rumours", Cat Steven's "Tea for the Tillerman" and Van Morrison's "Moondance".

Why? Because there are very few albums that retain their artistic value over time; a truly great album weaves a tapestry, that goes beyond a quick hit and a bunch of filler.

"Sweet Thing" is the best remake of a cover song I've ever heard - it soars. All of the songs leave you feeeling as if you've been on a journey.

I have decided that when I die, I want "When Ye Go Away" to be played at my funeral. It evokes an image of the sea, poignant farewells, and the haunting fiddle that is just slightly buried in the mix stirs something in me that nearly makes me weep, despite having heard it hundreds of times. This CD is so precious.

I really can't believe someone wrote a one star review for this album because they thought it was a "blues" album. My faith in humanity is only salvaged by albums such as this one. This is the kind of album that can truly change your life. I bought Fisherman's Blues when it came out and have not stopped listening to it yet. It is an album that seemed to capture a moment in the lives of truly impressive and talented people as they were going through life changes. Truly transcendent.

It is no small wonder that a song as raw and charming as this album's brilliant title track was recorded in the 80s, a decade of such excess and tasteless production as to have permanently altered the landscape of the music industry. Yet, for all the sideshows that passed for "music" throughout those years of awful haircuts and clown makeup, this album sounds conspicuously like the real thing: a festival of acoustic guitars, accordions, organs, fiddles and slide-mandolins lifted to the heavens on the glories of Mike Scott's unmistakable vocals. No one can say "whooo-hooo!" with as much conviction as that man, hooting, hollering and scraping his way through the beautifully bombastic "We Will Not Be Lovers" and the piano-hysterical "World Party." Opening as it does with four consecutive masterpieces, this album joins another Irish triumph, U2's "The Joshua Tree," as one of the most perfectly sequenced albums in rock history -- up there with Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" or Lou Reed's "New York." Though the album's momentum slows gradually with the progessively bland "Sweet Thing" and "Has Anybody Here Seen Hank," it never loses sight of its muse. Tunes like "The Stolen Child" or "Strange Boat," while hardly the album's most interesting compositions, still command a clarity and urgency almost unheard of throughout the decade from which they so improbably emerged. "Fisherman's Blues" is that rare thing: an album that smacks of as much relevance and power today as it did the day it was released.