Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Some fortunate people in this world are just born to deliver poetry to the mass population. Some, no matter what form that poetry should take or whether accompanied by the delicate sound of an acoustic guitar and the wistful nodding of a bespectacled, beard wearing and book loving saxophonist who clicks his fingers between notes, are just put on this Earth to urge others to turn away from a world of bleak impossibilities to a world where a single word in the right place can level mountains and take down Governments.

For Mike Scott and The Waterboys as a whole, this is perhaps especially true and following on from the phenomenally brilliant and lyrically important 2011 album, An Appointment With Mr. Yeats, the lyrical, the poetically outstanding and image ridden Modern Blues comes hurtling out of the gates and asks nothing more of the listener than to let their post new year defences down and allow The Waterboys access to play with the emotions of all.

For any band to try and come up with an album that surpasses their previous release is a tall ask. The attempt can even lead to friction of tectonic plate magnitude and the fall out, for the fans of the band and the members of the group especially, can be unpleasant and disrespectful to the memory. Perhaps the greatest achievement is to match the intensity, the sheer force of will and prowess that was in the preceding album and replicate that feeling, rather than trying to beat into the ground with a third of an inch thick plastic case and an inlay card.

Modern Blues does just that, it gives the listener the same sense of poetic justice and enthralling rolling images that could be found throughout An Appointment With Mr. Yeats and offers yet another glance into the mind of Mike Scott. In another time, perhaps another place, the musical poet would have been lauded in the same poetic journals as Ginsberg, Auden, Kerouac, Shelly and even Yeats himself, time has a habit of being out of step and kilter with an individual’s thoughts.

The whole album is one to completely sink into and feel disconcertedly and romantically lost with, November Tale and Long Strange Golden Road are thick with metaphor and sublime desires. November Tale is dressed in the same silk robe as T.S. Elliot’s The Waste land and Long Strange Golden Road gives the reader time to remember with pleasure the first time they may have read Kerouac’s On The Road. Both songs are arguably amongst the very finest The Waterboys have put together.

With other great tracks making Modern Blues bulge at the scenes, such as I Can See Elvis, the greatness instilled in The Girl Who Slept For Scotland and the damning whisper of Rosalind (You Married The Wrong Guy), the album is a true must buy, an album that sweeps you off your feet and proposes that beauty is in the hands of the artist, on this showing, that assertion is hard to disagree with.

Ian D. Hall