Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Anniversaries are special, they remind us just how far we have come in the search for ourselves and our time at the helm of our own personal blues, our backdrop of the fiddle pulsating away between the lyrics of the song we sing, as we take a pen to the wall and cross off yet another year, another celebration in the pursuit of an added dream. We cross off the years and then we look back, we survey the happiness and sometimes sour and we revel in them, for it is in the life we live that makes the anniversary special.
It is always seems special when The Waterboys and Mike Scott comes to Liverpool, a rousing reception always is keenly assured, the less than amusing in the gallery given short shrift, and the patient and the loyal rewarded with a band that truly inspires the poetic and the profound statements that Mike Scott has always been keen to explore and exemplify.
In the thirty years since The Waterboys recorded the album Fisherman’s Blues, so much has changed, but one thing remains constant, the relationship between Mike Scott and the audience, this is not one of a rock star or even a Folk rock act, but the simple beauty of the poet and the overwhelming muse, of one holding the other in awe, when the feeling is right between them, and never quite sure which way round the wonder is flowing.
It takes a sublime personality to shine when stood next to Mike Scott and to capture the harmony intended as this magical depth of poetic grace is given space to breath. In both Zeenie Summers and Jess Kavanagh, that harmony was given mystery, enchanting and exquisite depth, and their interaction with the incredibly talented Steve Wickham on fiddle was mind blowing and jaw dropping.
In a two set evening, songs such as All The Things She Gave Me, A Girl Called Johnny, We Will Not Be Lovers, the call out to the keyboard player, Brother Paul Brown, and his own personal background in Nashville, Tennessee, Man, What A Woman, The Christ In You, Sante Fe and The Raggle Taggle Gypsy, The Waterboys played out of their collective skins and gave the Liverpool crowd the best medicine for the post-Bank Holiday Blues, a series of songs in which the writer of such poetic gems chose to offer as the finest of gifts, wrapped in silk, presented with earnest craft; a night in which once more The Waterboys excelled.
Ian D. Hall