THE Waterboys have recorded their new album in Nashville, where frontman Mike Scott and fiddle player Steve Wickham were joined by American musicians.

Produced by Scott and mixed by Bob Clearmountain, Modern Blues will be released on January 19 next year on the Harlequin And Clown label, featuring nine new songs, among them Still A Freak, a shuddering blues number that The Waterboys premiered at York Barbican in August.

The decision to record The Waterboys' 11th album in the US was the catalyst for its swaggering sound and spirit.

“People should expect the unexpected from The Waterboys,” says Scott, who lives mostly in Dublin these days.

“Nashville has a reputation as Music City, USA and I fancied some of that. It’s one of the few cities that still has a recording studio industry intact, which brings the spur of competition. I know that across town Jack White's making a record, The Black Keys are making theirs. I like that competitive feeling, it’s exciting. It's a spur.”

Modern Blues is an electric, soulful, bold and free-wheeling rock'n'roll record, made at a time when the popular reach of The Waterboys has been spreading anew.

In 2013, Ellie Goulding scored a Top Three British hit with her cover of How Long Will I Love You and earlier this year, Prince performed Scott's best-known number, The Whole Of The Moon, solo at the piano during his Hit + Run show at Ronnie Scott’s in London. The same song was sung by finalist Sally Barker on primetime BBC 1 show The Voice.

Scott's1984 composition A Pagan Place has become a live staple for cult American indie band The War on Drugs and Waterboys’ songs have been used in such movies as About Time, Dom Hemingway and What We Did On Our Holiday.

Scott entered the Nashville studio intent on harnessing the rolling, spontaneous energy that fuelled some of The Waterboys’ greatest albums.

“I set out to make a record with an ensemble playing live, to get that performance spirit. It’s how I recorded Fisherman’s Blues,” he says.

To that end, he corralled old hands and new friends. Ralph Salmins, a mainstay on drums for the past four years, appeared alongside Scott and Wickham, while fresh to the ranks were Memphis keyboard player “Brother” Paul Brown, and David Hood, legendary bassist from the heyday of FAME studios and Muscle Shoals.

“I’ve got the man who played on R-E-S-P-E-C-T on bass, " says a laughing Scott. “He and Paul had a huge impact on the sound.”

In Waterboys’ tradition, a spirit of exploration defines the new album. In the 31 years since forming in 1983, Scott's band has been ever-changing, initially sculpting a layered post-punk sound on their first three albums, culminating in "the big music" of 1985’s This Is The Sea.

The evolution moved on apace with Celtic folk, gospel, country and rock whirlwind of Fisherman’s Blues, the New York guitar sounds of Dream Harder and the agitated Millennial sonic experimentation of A Rock In The Weary Land.

Scott emerged from a "rootless period" in 2011 with the fired-up poetic passion of An Appointment With Mr Yeats, an album of 14 W B Yeats poems set to rapturous rock music. Last year came Fisherman’s Box, a seven-disc summation of The Waterboys’ epic Irish sessions between 1986 and 1988, released to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Fisherman’s Blues.

Now Modern Blues is on its way with a track listing of Destinies Entwined; November Tale; Still A Freak; I Can See Elvis; The Girl Who Slept For Scotland; Rosalind (You Married The Wrong Girl); Beautiful Now; Nearest Thing To Hip and Long Strange Golden Road. The vinyl edition will be a double album with an extra track to the standard CD: an acoustic demo of Long Strange Golden Road, surely the perfect title to sum up The Waterboys' journey.