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 progressively 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. Gianmarco Manzione.
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