The Waterboys - Modern Blues

Here's an album that's a blast of fresh air and Spring sunshine.  Mike Scott and his gang continue to be idiosyncratic in some ways, but Modern Blues has a punchier, more mainstream sound than much of their earlier output.  Opener 'Destinies Entwined' sets the tone by kicking off with a throbbing riff and a swirl of keyboards, and some Dylanesque wordsmithery from Scott.  It may be a bit lightweight, but it's still an effective warm-up for what follows.

It's with the third track, 'Still A Freak', that this set really hits its stride, swaggering in with another gritty guitar riff and Booker T-ish keys, this time allied to more terse, determined lyrics, and elevated by a blistering guitar solo from Jay Barclay, full of tension and release.  The following 'I Can See Elvis' swings more loosely, playing with the image of Elvis as King in the afterlife, hanging out with dead icons of rock'n'roll and beyond.  It's a humorous conceit, with a killer pay off line that I won't give away.
There's often a beat aesthetic at play in both the words and music, the ultimate giveaway being the reading by Jack Kerouac that opens the final track, 'Long Strange Golden Road', while echoes of Van the Man drift to the fore here and there through a piano line or a horn phrase - 'Nearest Thing to Hip' practically quotes the horn figure from 'Did Ye Get Healed?'.
Lyrically, Scott carries this off with ease.  He conjures up dreamy epiphanies, neighbourhood nostalgia with a curled lip, reported conversations, and even an acid assessment of a lost love's husband.  Meantime the music is a bubbling, soulful brew that strides along with purpose, aided by a characteristically vibrant mix by Bob Clearmountain.  Modern Blues is a wall-to-wall pleasure, way good enough to demonstrate that The Waterboys are very much alive and kicking.

Journey to the Blues #3

The next step on the blues road was an indirect one, when I met my partner Jill.
I had been continuing to explore some new sounds via emusic.com, as well as going to the odd

Foy Vance, pre-twirly moustache

gig by the likes of The Black Keys and The Heavy, and paddling around in the shallow end of some of the blues-oriented rock I'd previously encountered over the years.  But when Jill and I first got together it quickly became apparent that we shared an enthusiasm for music.  In early exchanges we namechecked favourite songs - 'Thunder Road' on my part, Van Morrison's 'Precious Time' on hers.
Jill has more musical skills than I do.  In her schooldays she played the oboe, and when we met she was learning to play Scottish traditional music on the fiddle.  Unsurprisingly then, she likes folk music, but her tastes are eclectic enough to encompass blues alongside soul, country and Americana.  She was in the habit of taking in a few Celtic Connections gigs in Glasgow each January, so we were soon off to see a Gerry Rafferty tribute at the Royal Concert Hall, as well as the likes of Foy Vance and Rock, Salt and Nails at Oran Mor.
Jill is also a holiday fiend, and when we'd been going out for a year or more she was pondering possibilities for a big holiday in the summer of 2013, to celebrate completing a Masters degree.  So when I mentioned that I had the notion of travelling down the Mississippi Delta, vaguely hoping to get some sense of the home of the blues, she leapt at the idea.  And so it was that we set about arranging a trip that was to take in Nashville, Memphis, Clarksdale and New Orleans - a journey which will be recounted in the forthcoming series, 'Adventures in the South'.

You can start reading the Adventures In The South travelogue here.

Van Morrison - Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, 26 January 2015

How do you solve a problem like Van Morrison?  Don't get me wrong, I come not to bury Van, but to praise him.  The thing is, he is such a singular artist that he confounds expectations and classifications.
The show opens with a sequence of precision-tooled jazz/soul/swing - call it what you will, but 'Close Enough For Jazz', 'Magic Time' and 'Moondance' serve to conjure up a warm mood.  

Van Morrison - bends lines like Beckham

Then there's a throwback R&B medley.  'Baby Please Don't Go' lacks urgency, perhaps still bridging from the opening, but 'Parchman Farm' livens things up with some blues harp, and Van singing into the harp mic, before - glory be! - making a bit of a joke of the repeated gunshot drumming around the line about the protagonist having shot his wife.  'Don't Start Crying Now' rounds off the blues segment, and that's the cue for things to veer into distinctively Vannish territory.
'Raglan Road' has a soulful, Celtic tinge to it that begins to draw the audience in, and from that point there is a gradual unfolding into a gorgeousness in which song titles become irrelevant.  And that, I guess, is the point of Van Morrison.  His vocals play an elemental part in this - in the pantheon of vocal legends he must surely be up there with the likes of Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald in terms of his ability to bend and twist lines into new shapes.  The other thing that strikes me, not for the first time, is the signal beauty of some of the piano lines Van writes, which often hit that sweet spot of sounding unique and yet timeless.  His lyrics on some of these songs also occupy a Zen-like territory where simplicity becomes evocative, even if he does say 'Enlightenment, don't know what it is'.
Interspersed with the deepness, as it were, are lighter numbers that for me are equally delightful.  'Precious Time', 'Days Like This' and 'In The Afternoon' are all in this vein - the last of which raised laughs of recognition about 'afternoon delight' from some quarters of the audience.
The closing 'Into The Mystic' and encore of 'Ballerina' cast further spells over the audience to end the evening, with Van singing his way into the wings.  Along the way he leaves his band to deliver a well deserved showcase of their talents - though they didn't get an introduction, and if you manage to identify them via the internet you've got more patience than I have.  It's a curious breach of protocol to my mind, but perhaps Van Morrison deems playing with him to be a reward unto itself.
As I was leaving I heard one side of a conversation, in which some greybeard was offering his take on the gig to an acquaintance.  "Better than the last three times I saw him, when he was doing his jazz stuff.  That was hell.  It was alright - I liked the section with 'Raglan Road' and 'Common One'.  Can't be doing with 'Days Like This' and 'Precious Time' though."  Expecting Van Morrison to be one dimensional seems to me to be an invitation to disappointment.  Better just to enjoy the times when he chooses not to be difficult, I think.