大象传媒

There has been something of a Waterboys revival of late with current album, 'The Lightning Book', earning glistening, golden tongued reviews the like of which the band hasn't received since their Eighties heyday. Unfortunately tonight's audience seem somewhat time-locked, unwilling to acknowledgement recent developments and demanding The Waterboys adhere to the cod-Celtic majesty of 'Fisherman's Blues'. As quickly becomes clear the punters have nostalgia in their nostrils and, two songs in, are baying for 'The Whole of the Moon'. In the end they'll not get so much as a measly crescent, not one silvery sliver.

Keen to impress upon us that they are still a going concern and not a tribute act to their former selves, the first half of the performance is weighted with newer Waterboys material. And 'weighted' is the exact word to describe these songs, these heavy, lead-lined rockers. The runaway-train rhythms of 'Everybody Takes A Tumble' lead into the thunderclouds-a-gathering thrum of 'It's Gonna Rain', guitar and electric fiddle dipping and diving in tandem, elemental, sky-scraping, majestic. The audience duly applaud, but it's all too polite, too reserved, sterile. "Is it the venue?", enquires a bemused Mike Scott. "Would you rather be in the Ulster Hall?"

Well yes, the venue, all-seater this evening, is a little impersonal, but then so too are The Waterboys. Between song banter is minimal and as stale as Shane McGowan's kecks, whilst Scott, the dispassionate rock legend, routinely turns his back on the audience. With the crowd refusing to surrender their affections the band decide to call out the big guns.

The stage is suddenly awash in pools of bloodied scarlet and bruising purples, the mood suitably darkened for 'Red Army Blues'. A World War novella in song, this is a brooding, beastly tale of young lives sacrificed before they've even begun. The fiddle sweeps and scurries like the wind across the battlefield, a forlorn lament accompanied by Scott's plaintive croon and the hard, dignified beat of the drums. At last they've brought the human touch to their unerring technique, passion added to precision, feeling to finesse.

Ask and ye shall receive. The encore delivers the much demanded 'Fisherman's Blues' and in an instant The Waterboys are become musical body-snatchers, their siren song luring people from their seats, bodies are gyrating, hands-a-clapping and, finding their voices, believers are a-hollerin', the Waterfront a pagan place at last.

Francis Jones
Photographs by Alan Maguire -