No matter what shape Mike Scott’s muse is in (and she is a capricious creature who can conspire to make him come off like either Dylan at his fieriest or Donovan at his flakiest), you can always rely on The Waterboys for a rip-snorting live show. This is doubly true since violinist Steve Wickham rejoined; he and Scott have a telepathic – if not telekinetic – relationship, complemented by keyboardist Richard Naiff providing the third point of a trinity previously completed by Anthony Thistlethwaite.
So, the time is right for a full-on live archive to rival the Live Adventures official bootleg from 1998. Except Scott never does anything by the book. Yes, Karma To Burn features a brawny rhythm section (Steve Walters and Carlos Hercules), but also draws heavily on last year’s English and Irish acoustic tour.
It kicks off with ‘Long Way To The Light’, a tangled-up-in-blue travelogue reworked from Scott’s first solo album (Wickham stitches deft twists and curlicues into both this and ‘Bring ’Em All In’). But the real sparks fly over the next 20-odd minutes, starting with two paeans to pre-Christian landmarks: the brooding ‘Peace Of Iona’ (highlight of the otherwise patchy Universal Hall), all keening sea wind and blowhole blues; and a hefty ‘Glastonbury Song’ driven by Hercules’ mule-kick. ‘Medicine Bow’ features Wickham doing for his instrument what Cale did for the viola with the Velvets, followed by an elongated, eroto-gnostic ‘The Pan Within’. Not to mention Scott’s mad-hatter fantasia ‘The Return Of Jimi Hendrix’, a sort of psychedelic Jim Fitzpatrick myth set to freak-brother electric folk. At which point Scott’s logic becomes apparent – here, he's revisiting the cream of his solo career with a hot band, as well as breathing life into the rustic balm of Rodney Crowell’s ‘A Song For The Life’ and a long, unwinding take on ‘Come Live With Me’, pilfered from an old Ray Charles record.
There are a couple of questionable choices – there’s nothing much to be added to ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ or ‘The Whole Of The Moon’ at this stage – but for the most part Karma To Burn is worthy testament to one of the few bands who still treat live performances like a holy rite rather than a PR chore.