Barrowland, GlasgowPan-Celtic post-punk returns with a dash of tambourines and a swirl of mysticism as Mike Scott leads his genre-hopping crew
If there is one venue in the
UK synonymous with “the Big Music”, as the Celtic alliance of rousing mid-80s breakout post-punk bands was known – from Big Country and Simple Minds to U2 – it’s Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom. So to witness the
Irish Sea-straddling ensemble whose 1984 single gave the movement its name play at the hallowed spot again rates as no small pleasure.
“I had a misspent youth buying gallus clothes up The Barras,” says the Waterboys’ Edinburgh-born frontman and sole original member Mike Scott, employing the Scottish word for “daring” to describe the threads he picked up from the nearby flea market. Wearing an oversized black Stetson, black leather suit and polka-dot red scarf, his dress sense is no less adventurous today, at 60 years of age. Nor have his best songs lost any of their pluck and potency. Battering a brightly strung acoustic guitar while Dubliner sideman Steve Wickham scrapes a frayed riff up there among the most famous in folk-rock fuzz-fiddling – admittedly, this isn’t a crowded field – Scott leads his high-kicking way through a rendition of Fisherman’s Blues as energetic as any the band can ever have performed.