Waterboys - The Big Music

A long formative journey, travelled along the roads of a tireless musical quest, never once compromising: this is one way to sum up the artistic arc of Michael Scott, known as Mike, who for almost thirty years now has been the man behind the name "The Waterboys" — the collective moniker under which the Scottish musician has released a long string of albums, among them at least a couple of absolute masterpieces. Let's retrace the long story of a band, and of an often brilliant "music man", who probably never received the success and recognition they truly deserved.

Mike Scott was born in Edinburgh on 14 December 1958. His childhood was complicated by his parents' divorce (in 1968) and by his family's constant moves from one town to another across Scotland: in this way, the young Mike developed a restlessness and a tendency toward nomadism — both existential and artistic — that would later show up in the frequent changes of musical direction he would impose on his band's work. Like all teenagers, Scott developed a passion for girls and football, but his greatest love was music itself, especially that of Beatles, Bob Dylan and David Bowie: he soon learned to play guitar (he would go on to become an excellent multi-instrumentalist) and, at the age of 15, formed his first band in the Scottish town of Ayr.

At 18 he took up (without much enthusiasm) the study of English literature and philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, but soon abandoned it to devote himself full-time to his true great passion. Between 1977 and 1978, right in the midst of the punk era, he created the music fanzine "Jungleland" and formed a band called "The Bootlegs", which, once the line-up was completed with the arrival of his friend John Caldwell, changed its name to "Another Pretty Face".

The new band recorded four singles, received rather flattering reviews from the music press, was noticed by Ensign Records and consequently decided to relocate to London, where it changed its name once again to "Funhouse", before Scott, dissatisfied with the musical direction the group had taken, decided to leave it to pursue a new project, for which he was feverishly writing a number of songs.

On 23 December 1981, in a small recording studio in Islington, north London, called "Redshop", Mike Scott, aided by a 12-string Danelectro Bellzouki and some pre-recorded drum loops, recorded three new tracks in just a few hours ("December", "The Three Day Man" and "Bury The Heart"), which would form the original core of the Waterboys' forthcoming debut album.

With the Funhouse experience now definitively over, Scott looked around for musicians with whom to start a new project: on a record by his friend Nikki Sudden (former Swell Maps), the Scottish musician discovered a talented young saxophonist named Anthony Thistlethwaite and immediately brought him into a new band called The Red and the Black, which would also come to include a friend of Thistlewaite's, drummer Kevin Wilkinson. The new group would be very short-lived, but the partnership between Scott, Thistlewaite and Wilkinson would prove to bear substantial fruit.

A Girl Called Johnny

In the spring of 1982 Ensign asked Scott to return to the studio with producer Rupert Hine to record new songs and refine others already cut a few months earlier: these sessions would yield "A Girl Called Johnny," a cornerstone track of the early Waterboys period. In the autumn of 1983 a new full immersion at the Redshop studio, with help from Thistlewaite and Wilkinson, allowed Scott to record new material and considerably sharpen his studio skills.

The time was ripe for the release of a debut album: Ensign apparently had their sights set on Mike Scott as a solo artist, but he had other ideas, preferring to work within the framework of a group, and so he created The Waterboys (a nod to "The Kids," a song by Lou Reed from the 1973 album "Berlin"), before it became an actual new band, a kind of open collective which Anthony Thistlewaite and drummer Kevin Wilkinson would gradually join. Out of dozens of songs recorded by Mike Scott and co., eight were chosen, and in the summer of 1983 a self-titled album was released, marking the debut of the new outfit.

The Waterboys is an interesting record, though still undecided on which direction to take: its sound is a paradoxical yet at times captivating mix of Mike Scott's warm, passionate voice grafted onto icy post-punk atmospheres (typical of the era) and synthetic sounds "humanized" by Anthony Thistlewaite's airy, powerful saxophone. The guiding principles of the early Waterboys period can already be glimpsed here — the so-called "Big Music" that would define the band's next two albums even more clearly: that indefinable yet unmistakable and sweeping/overflowing "wall of sound," sung with emphasis and passion by Mike Scott and marked by lyrics that often touch on religiosity and mysticism (including pagan and ancestral strands).

The standout track on The Waterboys, and also the first sketches of the "Big Music" to come, is without doubt the first single lifted from the record, the gorgeous "A Girl Called Johnny," reportedly dedicated to "high priestess" Patti Smith: the song thrives on the perfect blend of Mike Scott's passionate voice and piano, Anthony Thistlewaite's saxophone, and percussion played by the two of them along with Ray Massey and producer Rupert Hine. Also notable is the opener "December," the album's second single: first recorded in the sessions of 23 December 1981 and later refined with Rupert Hine's help in the spring 1982 sessions, the track is a long ride (nearly seven minutes) through evocative post-punk atmospheres, with Mike Scott's 12-string prominently on display, and a passionate lyric that moves from fairly classic themes of a "warm" love story blossoming against the backdrop of a freezing December into a surprising finale steeped in mysticism and religiosity — quite literally transcendent.

Sparser sounds mark the raw but ultimately intriguing "The Three Day Man" (also the product of the late-1981 Redshop sessions), with a post-punk aftertaste once again, as does the long, subdued, atmospheric "Gala." More hints of "Big Music" surface in the lively, restless, and far more mature "I Will Not Follow," where Thistlewaite's sax returns and Nick Linden's bass and Kevin Wilkinson's drums also make an appearance. Considerably less interesting are the overly frantic "It Should Have Been You," perhaps undermined by a rather basic electronic drum part, and the slow-motion ballad "The Girl In The Swing," with its dark, almost sepulchral tones. More significant is the fierce, unsettling "Savage Earth Heart," which closes The Waterboys — or at least its original version, since several tracks "left off" from those recorded between 1981 and 1983 were included in the remastered edition of the album, released in 2002.

Ultimately, the Waterboys' debut album is an interesting record in which one can already sense the future evolution of Mike Scott and co. toward the "Big Music" that would become the band's stylistic signature until 1985, though it still comes across as unresolved and unripe, paying its dues to the post-punk era with sounds that would be decisively set aside in later work.

Celtic Neopaganism

The follow-up arrived just a year later, and indeed it could hardly have been otherwise, given Mike Scott's remarkable prolificacy as a songwriter and the fact that several tracks, born out of the autumn 1982 Redshop sessions, were already essentially ready. The new album, titled A Pagan Place, is a decidedly denser and more structured work than its predecessor, one that brings to completion the evolution of "Big Music" partly set out on the first record, and which definitively transforms the fluid, rather loosely defined Waterboys collective into a proper band. Alongside Anthony Thistlewaite and Kevin Wilkinson, the lineup now effectively included keyboardist Karl Wallinger (found through an ad Scott placed in the NME) and trumpeter Roddy Lorimer, who together with Thistlewaite completed an excellent horn section.

Made in two distinct phases (the November 1982 sessions at Redshop, and those of autumn 1983 — with the addition of Wallinger and Lorimer — at the Welsh Rockfield Studios, where the songs Mike Scott had worked out during his summer retreat in the Scottish town of Ayr were recorded), A Pagan Place opens straight away with one of the record's most significant moments, the thrilling "Big Music" crescendo of "Church Not Made With Hands," a track that picks up the mystical and religious themes already evident on the self-titled debut and that perfectly showcases the sonic power built from Mike Scott's voice, guitar and piano, Kevin Wilkinson's drums, and the rock-solid horn section of Thistlewaite and Lorimer.

Also notable is the biting, driving "All The Things She Gave Me," a kind of embittered reflection from a man who, at the end of a love affair, wonders where he can keep the things the woman who is no longer his once gave him, while the dreamy "The Thrill Is Gone," recorded like the previous track in the autumn 1982 sessions, clearly bears the imprint of the great Van Morrison and enriches the musical picture painted by Mike Scott with the aching notes of Tim Blanthorn's violin — a first step in the "Celtic" direction that would define the Waterboys' sound through the turn of the 80s into the 90s.

The full lineup, from Scott to Wallinger, by way of Thistlewaite, Lorimer and Wilkinson, comes together for the lovely, lively "Rags," while the short, breakneck "Somebody Might Wave Back" leads into "The Big Music," probably the album's greatest achievement and the manifesto of Mike Scott's poetics: the track, a thrilling sonic charge with the frontman's warm, passionate voice prominently unfurling a lyric steeped in an almost pagan rapture ("I have heard the Big Music and I'll never be the same… something so pure just called my name"), once again features the full band lineup, with the pleasant bonus of backing vocals from a young Eddi Reader, future singer of Scotland's Fairground Attraction and later the owner of a thoroughly respectable, perhaps somewhat underrated, solo career.

The atmosphere turns darker for the brooding, evocative penultimate track, titled "Red Army Blues": the song, also recorded in the autumn 1982 sessions, is a melancholy ballad in which Anthony Thistlewaite's sax soars to great heights, coloring with aching, desperate notes the story of a Red Army veteran who, after risking his life for his country during the Second World War, ends up interned in a gulag, an ideological victim of the Stalinist purges.

A Pagan Place closes with the ethereal, thoroughly pleasant title track, in which Scott again seems to draw on the Celtic, Van Morrison-esque suggestions already apparent in "The Thrill Is Gone." As happened with the first album, the remastered 2002 reissue added further unreleased tracks, testament to Mike Scott's fervid creativity; but even limiting the judgment to the eight tracks that originally made up the album's tracklist, one cannot help but note the decisive step forward of a fully realized, mature work compared to the still-unripe debut. By now The Waterboys was no longer the moniker of a solo artist, but a band in every sense: "Big Music" had become its creed, no longer a mere statement of intent. Mike Scott and co. began to see substantial returns on their work and toured Britain and the United States as the support band for U2. The time was ripe for the masterpiece.

The Boundless Sea

And right on schedule, the masterpiece arrives in autumn 1985, with This Is The Sea. As with the two previous albums, Mike Scott proves himself an extremely prolific songwriter, writing and recording some forty tracks over a year of work, of which only nine make it onto the final version of the record. The genesis of the album is recounted in detail by Scott himself in the fascinating liner notes of the remastered reissue, released in 2004 and featuring a second disc packed with many of the songs left off the original 1985 edition. According to the Waterboys frontman, the lyrics of This Is The Sea (particularly those of the single "The Whole Of The Moon") draw inspiration from the novel "Winter's Tale" by American writer Mark Helprin, while the spiritualism that pervades the record stems from his reading of C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald and Dion Fortune. The album's more strictly musical influences, meanwhile, can be traced back to Velvet Underground, Van Morrison's masterpiece "Astral Weeks" and the works of American composer Steve Reich. This Is The Sea, as Scott himself has reiterated, also benefits from closer collaboration among the band's members, confirming the cohesion the group had achieved, and it was keyboardist Karl Wallinger who helped Mike Scott hone the concept of "Big Music", building in the studio a genuine, Spector-esque wall of sound. The fruit of various sessions at different recording studios between spring and summer 1985, produced in part with the help of Mick Glossop and John Brand, This Is The Sea was released in the autumn of that same year, marking the culmination (and point of no return) of the Waterboys' "Big Music".

The album opens with the aching, almost cinematic and vaguely Spanish-flavoured intro of Roddy Lorimer's trumpet, which paves the way for the imposing wall of sound of "Don't Bang The Drum", an environmentally-themed song in which interweaving guitars, keyboards, percussion and horns — with Mike Scott's stentorian voice and Anthony Thistlewaite's blaring sax front and centre — create a truly overwhelming power. Clearer, more relaxed textures follow on "The Whole Of The Moon", a thoroughly enjoyable chart-friendly single that once again brilliantly refines the band's "Big Music" vocabulary. The meaning of the song's evocative, somewhat cryptic lyrics (“Unicorns and cannonballs, palaces and piers/ trumpets, towers and tenements/ wide oceans full of tears/ flags, rags, ferryboats, scimitars and scarves/ every precious dream and vision underneath the stars/ You climbed on the ladder/ with the wind in your sails/ you came like a comet/ blazing your trail/ too high, too far, too soon/ You saw the whole of the moon”) has long been debated: Scott himself, usually generous with information and anecdotes about his work (he has even recently published an autobiography), has never done much to solve the mystery, merely pointing out, as already mentioned, the influence of Mark Helprin's writing on the song.

The Scottish musician's beloved mystical themes return on "Spirit", a brief interlude (though on the 2004 remaster it reappears in an extended version of around four minutes) that leads into the dramatic, captivating "The Pan Within", which replaces the Christian-rooted spiritualism of the previous track with the neo-pagan thrill of discovering, beneath one's own skin, the presence of the Ancient God Pan. The song, one of many peaks on a collection with no weak points, begins almost quietly before climbing the steps of a thrilling musical crescendo, and is notable for the presence of a brilliant Irish violinist named Steve Wickham, discovered after he played on a demo by a very young Sinéad O'Connor: Wickham would soon become a full-fledged member of the band and a key figure in the "folk turn" of Fisherman's Blues.

After the restless, and arguably less compelling, "Medicine Bow", inspired by the plight of Native Americans, comes the splendid "Old England", a powerful indictment of the decline of Margaret Thatcher's England — a nation still basking in the memory of past glories while in reality dying a slow death, hypocritically turning a blind eye to the suffering of young people, victims of social hardship and drug abuse (and in this respect, throughout his long career, Mike Scott would repeatedly reaffirm his firm and sincere rejection of drugs and alcohol). The track is a magnificent, incisive ballad that masterfully weaves together voice, piano, drums and sax, hiding among its verses precious literary references to James Joyce (the refrain "Old England is dying") and William Butler Yeats.

Frenzied rhythms power the wild, almost punk "Be My Enemy", while the horn section returns to the fore for the poignant love story told in "Trumpets". The album closes with the magnificent title track, an overwhelming climax but also, paradoxically, an epitaph for the band's "Big Music". The song — to be listened to strictly at top volume to fully appreciate its "fullness" — is a thrilling sonic ride carrying a message of hope and catharsis, rejecting any nostalgia for the past and urging listeners to live in their present.

With yet another masterpiece, the "perfect" album of Mike Scott's band's early period comes to a close. Having ideally brought his experimentation with so-called "Big Music" to completion, the Scottish musician, ever in search of new inspiration, would turn his gaze westward, toward the Emerald Isle, whose soil he would dig his hands into in search of the roots of Celtic music.

A Blues For Ireland

Between 1985 and 1988, the year Fisherman's Blues came out, a number of things happened to the Waterboys: keyboardist Karl Wallinger, who had played a major part in shaping "Big Music", left the group (though remaining on excellent terms with Mike Scott) to pursue a solo project which, under the collective name World Party, would release five interesting, underrated albums between 1987 and 2000 (whose only hit single, "She's The One", ironically only became a huge success thanks to Robbie Williams' cover version). The vacant spot in the Waterboys' line-up was filled on an interim basis by Irish violinist Steve Wickham, already heard on "The Pan Within", whose influence was soon felt in the band's musical direction. Mike Scott, indeed, while a guest of Wickham's in Dublin, fell in love with Ireland and moved there for almost six years, during which he deepened his knowledge of, and passion for, not only Celtic folk music and the poetry of W.B. Yeats, but also the American folk of Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams, increasingly appreciating its immediacy and its ability to strike straight at the heart without excessive studio-built trappings and overdubs. In the liner notes to the 2006 remastered reissue of Fisherman's Blues, as ever brimming with anecdotes and curiosities, Scott would describe his frustration at being unable to reproduce live the full-bodied sound of the "Big Music" created in the studio for This Is The Sea, and would explain how, from this feeling, arose the pressing need to go back to the roots and embrace the freedom of new sonic experimentation.

Driven by this inner urgency, Scott, as was his habit, wrote and recorded dozens of songs between 1986 and 1988 over the course of several sessions, initially at Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin and later, after a brief stint in San Francisco under the supervision of producer Bob Johnston, at Spiddal House in Galway, in the Gaelic heart of Ireland, where the musician went in search of the deepest essence of Celtic folk music. Thirteen tracks born of these sessions were chosen to make up the new album's track list, while ten others would be released in 2002 under the title Too Close To Heaven (tellingly renamed "Fisherman's Blues Part 2" for the American market), and a further fourteen offered as a "bonus disc" on the aforementioned 2006 remastered reissue. With the new album, the Waterboys essentially reaffirmed their original nature as a collective name open to collaborations with a wide array of musicians and session players (a good twenty of them, in addition to the ever-faithful Thistlewaite, Lorimer, Wilkinson and Wickham).

Fisherman's Blues came out in the autumn of 1988 and was immediately hailed by the music critics of the day as a new masterpiece. The "Big Music" that had defined the first three albums was now just a memory: what had taken its place was a stirring return to the roots of British folk music (for which Scott would coin the term "Raggle Taggle Sound") and a record steeped in the damp green of Irish fields and the peaty smell typical of the Emerald Isle.

The collection opens with the stirring title track, a rousing folk ballad co-written with Steve Wickham, whose violin, beautifully paired with Anthony Thistlewaite's mandolin, takes centre stage, with Scott's passionate voice singing an epic yet poignant tale (“I wish I was a fisherman/ tumbling on the sea/ far away from dry land/ and its bitter memories/ …/ no cieling bearing down on me/ save the starry sky above/ with Light in my head/ and you in my arms”). Wickham is again prominent on the feverish "We Will Not Be Lovers", an "angry" tale of a love and a passion that can never blossom: the track, one of the album's peaks, is probably the most driving and torrential piece on the record, a genuine wall of sound that grants no respite.

Decidedly milder, more relaxed rhythms characterise the sweet "Strange Boat", a ballad with almost country-flavoured atmospheres, while the following "World Party" bears the fingerprints of by-then "ex-Waterboy" Karl Wallinger (co-writer of the track with Mike Scott and bassist Trevor Hutchinson) and, tellingly, the keyboardist's unmistakable touch briefly rekindles the last embers of the now-abandoned "Big Music" (it's worth noting, as a curiosity, that the song's title would go on to inspire Wallinger's name for his new band).

Mike Scott's old, never-dimmed love for Astral Weeks resurfaces with a beautiful, heartfelt cover of Van Morrison's classic "Sweet Thing", while the first side of the album's original vinyl pressing closes with the brief instrumental interlude "Jimmy Hickey's Waltz", poised between Irish folk and American country.

The second side opens with another masterpiece, the romantic "And A Bang On The Ear", a long folk ballad written by Scott in collaboration with Thistlewaite and Wickham, recounting old lost loves in tones both poignant and wry (the "bang on the ear" of the title is said to be Irish slang for "a kiss on the cheek"). Country and America return, perhaps less compellingly, on "Has Anybody Here Seen Hank?", dedicated precisely to the icon Hank Williams, while the mood turns distinctly Irish again with the characteristic notes of the traditional "When Will We Be Married?", once more "dominated" by Steve Wickham's unmistakable fiddle. Almost Californian flavours (but with a typically "Irish" violin) colour the smooth ballad "When Ye Go Away", while "Dunford's Fancy" is a brief instrumental divertissement dedicated by Steve Wickham to his friend and bodhrán player Steve Dunford, brother of John Dunford (who co-produced part of the album).

Rarefied, deeply evocative atmospheres define "The Stolen Child", a bold and thoroughly successful musical setting of the famous poem by W.B. Yeats (the true patron saint of anyone who, at some point in their life, falls in love with the culture, literature and traditions of the Emerald Isle). The duet between Mike Scott and the deep, rich narrating voice of poet Tomas Mac Eoin, accompanied by Colin Blakey's flute, is without doubt one of the high points of a collection with no weak moments, and it closes with a cheeky, good-humoured tribute to Woody Guthrie, featuring a couple of lines from "This Land Is Your Land" in which the names of American cities are swapped for Irish locations, as if to underline the thread that, across the Atlantic, connects Irish music to American music, and the wellsprings of inspiration that led Scott and company to create the masterpiece called Fisherman's Blues.

The Waterboys' fourth album met with excellent critical acclaim which, combined with decent sales, further convinced Mike Scott of the soundness of his choices and of the value of continuing his journey in search of the roots of British music. For the umpteenth time, the Waterboys proved themselves to be a collective with an extremely fluid line-up: alongside the four "stable" members Scott, Thistlewaite, Wickam and Hutchinson came the talented flautist from "The Stolen Child", Colin Blakey, the young and brilliant accordionist Sharon Shannon, and Dublin drummer Noel Bridgeman — already present on the Fisherman's Blues sessions — who took over the spot left vacant by the departure of Kevin Wilkinson (who would briefly return to the band a few years later, before tragically taking his own life in 1999).

Raggle Taggle Sound

With the new seven-piece line-up, the Waterboys toured in the summer of 1989, turning a series of live shows into a genuine stream of musical creativity that could only lead naturally back to the studio to record an album. The new work, titled Room To Roam (taken from a line by Scottish poet George MacDonald) and released in the autumn of 1990, was recorded at Spiddal House in Galway, already used for part of the Fisherman's Blues sessions. Even more than its predecessor, it is a Celtic folk album (or "Raggle Taggle Sound", as Mike Scott called it), with the strong, American-flavoured country streaks that had characterised part of the previous record's songs now much less prominent.

In the typically lavish liner notes of the 2008 remastered edition (which, as with the previous albums, includes a second disc with no fewer than 17 unreleased tracks and live versions), Mike Scott, while highlighting the substantial contribution of co-producer Barry Beckett, explains how the creative process behind the recording of Room To Roam — extremely free and open to input from every member of the band — was fundamentally different from that of previous albums: this time, alongside original songs, the band recorded several Irish and Scottish traditionals, in many cases altering the lyrics or the musical arrangement. The collection contains a great many tracks (at least for an era still "dominated" by vinyl) — a full 17 — yet the album's running time is fairly short (around 41 minutes), proof that many of the songs are small, delightful interludes (no fewer than seven clocking in under two minutes), which, while betraying a certain lack of resolution and a somewhat fragmented feel, also testify to the inexhaustible creativity of a band at the peak of its musical quest. In the 2008 notes, Mike Scott also claims that Room To Roam, besides the obvious influence of the wild, untouched landscapes of western Ireland, owes a strong debt to the most psychedelic and experimental Beatles (the "Sgt. Pepper's" era, to be precise).

The Waterboys' fifth album opens with the delicate, very brief ballad "In Search Of A Rose", a kind of gentle celebration of an inward journey of self-discovery, and finds its most significant moments in the (almost) punk folk (perhaps slightly influenced by their contemporaries, the Pogues?) of "Song From The End Of The World"; in the delightfully childlike flute played by Colin Blakey on "A Man Is In Love"; in the playful pop of "Bigger Picture"; in the raw, galloping drive of "Life Of Sundays" (perhaps the most "American"-sounding track on the record); in the bizarre psychedelic experimentation of "Islandman"; in Anthony Thistlewaite's sax, which resurfaces on the romantic, airy "How Long Will I Love You?"; in the fun little "dixie" orchestra of "Spring Comes To Spiddall"; in the string of Irish and Scottish traditionals performed with taste and genuine involvement (among which special mention must go to the convincing rendition of the classic "Raggle Taggle Gipsy", previously recorded many times by groups such as the Dubliners and Planxty); and in the title track, a wild instrumental jig that closes the collection bearing the collective signature of every member of the band.

In short: Room To Roam is probably the most varied and experimental record the Waterboys ever made, firmly rooted in the path of rediscovering Celtic tradition already begun with Fisherman's Blues, yet open to the pull of a restless, wide-ranging musical quest. Room To Roam is also the band's most "democratic" album, given that in later years the group would be reduced to little more than a moniker for its leader. Mike Scott's voice, usually emphatic and declamatory, takes on a more subdued, whispered tone here, and the result — admittedly a touch disorienting — turns out to be thoroughly enjoyable.

On the other hand, Room To Roam pays the price for its fragmented nature, for being made up largely of sketches, for its essential lack of resolution. All told, it's a good record — interesting, rich in ideas, and well worth rediscovering and reassessing — but one that nonetheless falls short of the band's masterpieces.

Room To Roam is also the record that marks the end of the Waterboys' folk phase. The band's members were divided over which musical direction to take: the longtime members, Scott foremost among them, felt the need to return to a more rock-oriented sound, while the "Celtic" contingent — Wickam, Shannon, Blakey and Bridgeman — understandably wanted to continue down the path set out from Fisherman's Blues onward. Under the strain of these internal tensions the group fell apart, and as a first consequence, Room To Roam was toured with a typically rock line-up made up of Scott, Thistlewaite, Hutchinson and an additional drummer.

Before long, however, the paths of the three surviving Waterboys diverged too (amicably and by mutual consent, to the point that their mutual respect and friendship remained intact): Anthony Thistlewaite became a permanent member of Irish band the Saw Doctors and recorded several solo albums, while Trevor Hutchinson, who also settled permanently in Ireland, formed Lùnasa, with whom he continued his exploration of Celtic music.

Left alone by his former travelling companions, with his decade-long relationship with Ensign Records now at an end (the label released the predictable greatest-hits set The Best Of Waterboys 1981-1990 in 1991), Mike Scott bid farewell to Ireland and moved to America, where he tried unsuccessfully to put together a new band. He decided to go it alone instead, landed a new deal with Geffen Records, and, with the help of a sizeable cast of session musicians (including bassist Kenny Aaronson and drummer Jim Keltner, Ry Cooder's longtime collaborator), recorded Dream Harder at Right Track Studios in New York — the sixth album released under the Waterboys name, though in practice a genuine solo record.

Having abandoned the folk and Celtic vein, the watchword for the new record was "rock 'n' roll", but the results were not especially encouraging: "Dream Harder" proves to be a flat, uninspired work that tries, unsuccessfully, to recapture the full-bodied sound of the "Big Music" era of a few years earlier (the absence of Karl Wallinger in the recording studio is sorely felt), and which, barring a few exceptions, deeply disappoints both critics and fans alike — both the longtime faithful and those won over by the "folk turn".

The acoustic instruments that had defined Fisherman's Blues and Room To Roam were set aside, and Dream Harder opens, tellingly, with the aggressive electric guitars of "The New Life", a (admittedly rather one-note) "mission statement" track and a clear declaration of intent regarding the new direction of the Waterboys project (“I’ve burned my bridges/ and I’m free at last/ All my chains/ are in the past/ The New Life starts here”). Far more convincing is the record's second track, the splendid "Glastonbury Song", one of the Waterboys' most famous songs (and, in Italy, the subject of a fine cover version by our own Samuele Bersani): the track is a moving, sweeping electro-acoustic ballad that revisits the spiritual themes dear to Mike Scott (the line "I just found God", repeated several times in the chorus). More mysticism, this time neo-pagan, appears in the pleasant "The Return Of Pan", a kind of "The Pan Within, Part 2", tellingly written by Scott during a stay in the Greek region of Arcadia, revisiting the figure of the Great God Pan already explored in the aforementioned track from This Is The Sea.

For the rest, there is really very little worth noting on Dream Harder, and the album as a whole simply fails to rise above a golden mediocrity, trudging along among renewed calls for reinvention, once again invoked with weary bravado (and a drawn-out, rather vulgar guitar solo) on the listless "Preparing To Fly" (“I haven’t felt so great/ since I first went west/ I’ve got brilliant intentions/ unthinkable plans/ I’ve got sparks and electric shocks/ exploding in my hands”); the countrified second thoughts of the plodding "Corn Circles"; the unlikely funky crossover of "Suffer"; the embarrassingly psychedelic-tinged nursery rhyme of "Spiritual City"; the frankly monotonous "Love And Death" (another setting of a W. B. Yeats poem, sadly a far cry from the triumph of the excellent "The Stolen Child"); the bland pop-rock of "Good News"; and the muddled "The Return Of Jimi Hendrix" (a tribute to the great guitarist, co-written by Mike Scott with Jim Keltner and former Waterboy Anthony Thistlewaite).

All in all, Dream Harder is a frankly mediocre record, notable only for a couple of fine songs but, taken as a whole, a considerable disappointment — one that dented the Waterboys' standing and seriously risked becoming the band's final epitaph, given that Mike Scott chose to shelve the name and carry on as a solo artist.

Scott goes it alone

Having abandoned his American temptations, the Scottish musician returns to his roots, signing a new deal with Chrysalis (the parent company of Ensign Records), which in 1994 releases The Secret Life Of The Waterboys 81-85 (a collection of demos, unreleased tracks and live cuts dating back to the band's early period) and, soon after, in 1995, Bring 'em All In, the first album released under the name Mike Scott and the first he recorded in his native Scotland (at the Findhorn Foundation, a sort of spiritual and ecological community where the musician decides to settle for a while).

The songs on the new record are bare-bones and essential, we might even say “singer-songwriterly”, following in the footsteps of the folkiest Bob Dylan, and in any case fairly equidistant from the “Big Music” of the first three Waterboys albums, from the “Raggle Taggle Sound” of the following two, and from the anonymous rock of “Dream Harder”. The tracks are mostly acoustic, almost always intimate in tone, and often performed by Scott alone with just guitar, voice and little else, outlining a sincere and anguished work, probably born of a difficult period in the musician's life (1995 being the very year he divorced his wife, Irene Keogh), but perhaps a little too one-note and subdued.

Frankly, it's hard to tell one track from another, and just as hard to single out the most significant ones on a collection of fairly uniform quality, with no great flashes of brilliance. The album opens with the syncopated rhythms of the title track, before moving into the bleak, unsettling atmospheres of “Iona” (dedicated to a small island in the Hebrides, home to a famous abbey founded in the sixth century by Saint Columba), followed by the dramatic crescendos of the biting “Edinburgh Castle”. Gently folky atmospheres, but lyrics worthy of the most banal “Christian rock”, mark the heartfelt prayer of “What Do You Want Me To Do?”, while “I Know She's In The Building” is an electric ballad that practically never takes off, but is notable for yet another curious nod to the god Pan.

Playful and lively is the charming dedication to Dublin found in “City Full Of Ghosts”, probably one of the best tracks on the album, while the rest of the record flows by pleasantly enough on the whole, but without leaving much of a mark, except for the pleasant ballad “Long Way To The Light”, a sort of autobiographical confession of the long journey of self-discovery that led Mike Scott to break up his band, return to his native Scotland after years of wandering, and finally see the light of a new future. The album closes with its most electric and lively track, titled “Building The City Of Light”, which, while not exactly stopping the show, at least manages to get a foot tapping for a few minutes.

Bring 'em All In thus proves to be a decent record, one that commendably distances itself from the pomposity that weighed down the pretentious Dream Harder, but that never manages to rise above a golden mediocrity, too flat and one-note to stick in the memory, too brooding and weighed down by spiritual themes (probably stemming from Scott's stay at the Findhorn Foundation): in short, too... un-Waterboys!

Unpredictable as ever, Mike Scott soon charts a new musical course, and with the help of a crack team of session men (including American drummer Jim Keltner, Welsh bassist Pino Palladino, and English backing vocalist Ian McNabb) and producer Niko Bolas in the studio (who had already worked with the Scottish musician on his solo debut), he records a new album under his own name in London which, as its telling title Still Burning suggests, makes clear the author's firm intention to leave behind the anguished intimacy of his previous work and prove that the fire burning in the grooves of the Waterboys' records is neither out nor dormant.

The album, released in 1997 by Chrysalis, opens with the convincing “Questions”, given a nearly soulful feel by a fine horn section, while the following “My Dark Side” is a more electric, biting track. After the (admittedly rather cloying) interlude of the slow ballad “Open”, we reach the album's masterpiece: the orchestral pop of the Beatles-esque “Love You Anyway”, enriched by a sweeping string section, which seems to hook directly into the britpop vein then at the peak of its arc in the mid-90s.

More horns take the spotlight on the pleasant, if perhaps somewhat anonymous, “Rare, Precious And Gone”, while things turn electric and crackling for “Dark Man Of My Dreams”, a track marked (and perhaps weighed down) by long guitar solos, as is also the case with the unbridled “King Electric” — two tracks which, along with the lively title track and the Tom Petty-style, fizzing rock of “Man On The Mountain” (complete with “Oh, yeah” and “La-la-la” backing vocals), mark a sharp break from the pensive, acoustic sound of Bring 'em All In.

Clear Beatles-esque influences return on the splendid “Strawberry Man”, one of the most significant tracks on the record, while the moving ballad “Everlasting Arms” is equally convincing, as is the touching, epic “One Of Many Rescuers”, a bridge thrown between Britain and the United States.

On the whole, Still Burning is a good record, one that winks at britpop and occasionally indulges in more distinctly American-style FM rock temptations, predictably far from the Waterboys' 80s masterpieces, but undoubtedly the best of the three albums released after Room To Roam, well worth a listen free of preconceptions and, perhaps, an overdue reassessment, given that it went largely unnoticed on release.

Still Burning, in fact, leaves old Waterboys fans cold (if not downright indifferent) and fails to win any new converts to the cause. Mike Scott himself seems to realize this, and so, while in 1998 Chrysalis releases a new anthology — this time aimed at the American market and titled The Whole Of The Moon — the Scottish musician decides, whether reluctantly or with a sigh of relief we cannot know, to close the solo chapter and resurrect the glorious Waterboys name.

Back in the family

The historic Scottish outfit thus reopens for business after seven years, celebrating the new millennium with A Rock In The Weary Land (2000). But in truth, the new lineup bears almost no trace of that historic experience, save for Thistlethwaite's friendly participation, and the only real survivor is Scott himself, who justifies reviving the band's name by pointing to a sound that is more “choral” and multifaceted than his solo work. And indeed, tracks like “My Love Is My Rock In The Weary Land” (an epic 8-minute tour de force, complete with an unlikely gospel coda) and the murky, anguished “Is She Conscious” dust off part of the band's old arsenal, drawing above all on its early, more markedly rock-oriented phase and on the lessons of the most Lennon-esque Beatles. It's no coincidence that critics would use the term “sonic rock” for the record.

The contribution of Thighpaulsandra, a sound manipulator already in the service of Julian Cope, helps forge a dense, enveloping sound — all too overloaded with distorted electricity on the opening “Let It Happen”, but also capable of settling into soft, dreamy ballads like “The Wind In The Wires”, or indulging in more predictable electro-acoustic episodes (“It's All Gone”, “Malediction”). Scott's voice remains as unmistakable as ever, a mark of quality, but the impression is that the Scottish bard let ambition and self-regard get the better of him, in an attempt to rebuild the Waterboys experience on a new, pompous rock architecture, of which the overstretched, pretentious “Crown” (more than seven minutes of roaring guitars and sax gone off the rails) is, for better or worse, the most faithful expression.

The record doesn't break through commercially, but it does at least reawaken interest in the Waterboys phenomenon, and Scott takes advantage of this shortly after to release Too Close To Heaven (2001), a valuable collection of outtakes from Fisherman's Blues (which, as mentioned, came out in the United States under the title “Fisherman's Blues, Part 2”). Ten tracks left off the final running order, which suggest that that masterpiece of an album could easily have come out as a double LP. Because in the breakneck gallop of the traditional “On My Way To Heaven” (with Roddy Lorimer's trumpet to the fore), in the no less vibrant “Lonesome Old Wind” (with Jim Keltner on drums and John Patitucci on bass), in the Morrison-esque, torrential title track (over 12 minutes of white-hot pathos, between Scott's impassioned singing, sax and fiddle flourishes, and a relentless rhythm section), in the unexploded tension of the pulsating “The Ladder” (with the vocal rising majestically amid electric piano and fiddle), and in what finally detonates in “Custer's Blues” (with Wickham on fuzz mandolin), one catches glimpses of the purest Waterboys sound, still suspended between the brilliant rough edges of their debut and the folk-rock maturity of Fisherman's Blues.

And even when they retreat into harmless country-flavoured jaunts ("Good Man Gone") or drink from the reassuring springs of Celtic folk ("A Home In The Meadow"), the Waterboys confirm that in that period they had truly reached an extraordinary chemistry, perhaps never to be matched again.

A Theatre in the Woods

But the resurfacing of those memorable sessions at Windmill Lane (Dublin, 1986) makes the return to the reality of the 2000s all the more awkward. Scott at least manages to patch things up with violinist Steve Wickham, whom he enlists for a new album of original material under the Waterboys name. Yet not even Universal Hall (2003) manages to reverse a decline that by now seems irreversible. The whole record is steeped in a magical spirit, in keeping with the neo-paganism Scott has long championed, and is dedicated to the special location where it was recorded: the underground Universal Hall, a pentagonal theatre nestled in the woods of Findhorn (Scotland), distinctive for its large decorated stained-glass windows and its massive timber structure.

The charm of the place brings Scott and his companions back onto the natural path of folk. The arrangements, too, are now leaner and more measured compared to the excesses of A Rock In The Weary Land. Sitting alone at the piano on "I've Lived Here Before", interspersing the chimes with soft guitar arpeggios ("Every Breath Is Yours"), or waiting for an explosion that never comes (the obsessive chant of "Always Dancing, Never Getting Tired"), the Edinburgh minstrel remains suspended in a limbo where the magical charge of his music only resurfaces in flashes. And when he tries to revive the electric experiments of previous records, he lapses into second-hand grandiosity ("Silent Fellowship", "E.B.O.L.") or even kitsch (the tumultuous — and dreadful — "Seek The Light").

But the record's strong point lies in the rediscovered rapport with Wickham, which culminates in rustic soundscapes of undeniable charm: the liturgical "Peace Of Iona", embellished by the fiddle's country flourishes; the ballad "The Christ In You", where the violin-voice dialogue truly rekindles the old magic; the brief Irish traditional "The Dance At The Crossroads". And while a preachy tone undermines the hymn "This Light Is For The World", the title track manages to temper Scott's wordiness with refined instrumental touches that echo the atmospheres of Fisherman's Blues.

Overall, this is a record that certainly doesn't restore the Waterboys to past glories, but which returns them to a dignified, auteur folk-rock, sealing the reconstitution of the band's core axis (Scott-Wickham) in live shows too, captured on the album Karma To Burn (2005).

But then, putting on Book Of Lightning (2007), one is once again thrown off balance. Because that devil Scott comes out with new, ill-advised rock exhumations, in the form of a glam-tinged pseudo-boogie that really doesn't suit him ("Love Will Shoot You Down"), or with raucous, shapeless electric ballads ("Nobody's Baby Anymore").

The Scottish bard doesn't seem at all able to pick up the thread of his songwriting again, as he flounders between Beatles-esque seductions updated to the Britpop era ("Crash Of Angel Wings", "It's Gonna Rain") and blatant nods to Van Morrison (the melodramatic confession of "Sustain").

When he corrects his aim, taking refuge in an Ireland-tinged folk-rock ("Strange Arrangement"), punctuated by piano and violin ("You In The Sky", "The Man With The Wind At His Heels") or just barely reinforced with electric injections ("She Tried To Hold Me"), Scott at least rediscovers the classicism of his style, managing to somehow pull out of the doldrums. But overall the impression is that the flame rekindled by the previous Universal Hall has gone out once again.

An Appointment with Yeats

Perhaps aware that he had ended up in a cul-de-sac, Scott allows himself a four-year break. And his return to the scene is brimming with renewed ambition: nothing less than a concept album, An Appointment With Mr. Yeats (2011), in which the Waterboys set the poems of William Butler Yeats to music.

The Irish bard has always exerted a strong influence on the folk world, Irish and otherwise — just think of the references to his poetry found in the repertoires of artists like Van Morrison, Donovan, Loreena McKennitt, Smiths, U2, as well as our own Angelo Branduardi, who dedicated an entire album to him ("Branduardi canta Yeats"). The Waterboys themselves, as we've seen, produced a formidable version of "The Stolen Child" on Fisherman's Blues and also set "Love And Death" to music (on Dream Harder).

For Scott, an adoptive Irishman, Yeats's poetry has thus always been a constant guiding light. So after an event-concert in the early Nineties, in which he had the chance to set four of his poems to music, in 2010 came the definitive seal: five evenings (from 15 to 20 March) at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, the very theatre founded by Yeats, devoted entirely to the musical transposition of the Irish master's work.

The great success achieved encouraged Scott to translate that experience onto record (even though only 14 of the 20 songs performed at the concert would make the final tracklist). The result is a complex work, as fascinating at times as it is uneven overall, in which the Waterboys chase after their lost folk vein, updating it with modern sounds carrying a vaguely bluesy and psychedelic touch, thanks also to an expanded line-up featuring the shining contributions of singer Katie Kim and factotum Kate St. John.

An Appointment With Mr. Yeats, however, doesn't shake off a recurring flaw in Scott's output: an overabundance of sounds and ideas; just listen to the opening "The Hosting Of The Shee", which drowns in a whirlwind of guitars, horns and keyboards, losing intensity partly because of a rhythm section that's a touch too mechanical and clinical. Better, if anything, is the restless jig of "Mad As The Mist And Snow", where the instrumental crescendo, complete with a searing violin solo, serves the song's emotional climax, or the ballad "Song Of Wandering Aengus" (already plundered by Donovan and Branduardi), where a riot of keys (double keyboard, electric piano and organ) manages to create a soft sonic carpet, over which Sarah Allen's "pastoral" flute then finely embroiders.

But the impression is that, once again, Scott is more at ease when he duets with Wickham's violin on more composed, restrained arrangements, as in the midtempo "Sweet Dancer" (with Irish singer Katie Kim lending a hand on vocals) or the poignant "News For The Delphic Oracle", with its fresh Celtic flourishes and unpredictable neo-cabaret coda. Or when he immerses himself in fairy-tale scenarios, dusting off a very progressive mellotron on the closing "The Faery's Last Song".

The more rock-oriented episodes (the Lennon-esque "A Full Moon March", the long tour de force of "September 1913", between piano phrasing and electric-guitar sparks) remain somewhat unresolved, caught between the fury of This Is The Sea and the mature torpor of the band's more recent experiments, and not even the bluesy dressing of "The Lake Isle Of Innisfree" (one of Yeats's most celebrated poems) manages to warm any hearts.

There's no shortage of striking touches here and there (Kate St. John's English horn on "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death", the seductive vocal duet with Kim on "Politics", the Morrison-esque echoes of the intense "Let The Earth Bear Witness"), but overall Scott fails to make the most of the opportunity. Still, An Appointment With Mr. Yeats at least brings the Waterboys back to a dimension that suits them far better — not the magic of their best days, but one that settles them into a dignified, mature mannerism.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel a bit, Scott then goes back to raiding his archives with In A Special Place (2011), a collection of 15 demos taken from the This Is The Sea sessions. These are largely bare-bones versions, with Scott on piano, occasionally accompanied by a drum machine. A work strictly for collectors, accompanied by a booklet containing the author's notes on the songs, including scans of the lyrics from his notebook.

Modern times

January 2015 brings yet another change of pace with Modern Blues, an extraordinarily inspired record that justifies its own existence from the very first five minutes of the electric charge "Destinies Entwined", a genuine instant classic. Anyone expecting a folkye throwback from Modern Blues will be disappointed: big electric guitars and vintage keyboards take over the scene, complete with seventies-style solos (very Crazy Horse) and highly epic surges. The first three tracks alone would be enough to call Modern Blues a thoroughly successful album, with "November Tale" (the first single) seductive in a thoroughly gripping way, and the irresistible rock'n'roll stride of "Still A Freak". But there's much more besides, six further tracks that stay on an impressively high level, recorded with Bob Clearmountain at the controls and the help of some Nashville-area musicians, where the album was recorded.

The album moves between more vigorous compositions ("Rosalind", the long closing charge of "Long Strange Golden Road") and caressing moments ("The Girl Who Slept For Scotland", "Nearest Thing To Hip"), between modern-blues cadences ("I Can See Elvis" justifies the album's title) and wonderful alt-pop forays where catchiness reigns supreme ("Beautiful Now"). Modern Blues is classic rock, poised ideally between Springsteen and electric Dylan, but played in a thoroughly contemporary way. Right at the moment when bands like War On Drugs are replicating (and updating) certain psych-alt-folk atmospheres, the Waterboys, rather than riding the wave and claiming paternity over it, shift the focus elsewhere, playing at being the Rolling Stones instead. Modern Blues is the album you don't expect, churned out by a band in great shape, light years away from any notion of early retirement.

The saga of Mike Scott and his Waterboys, in short, looks set to run on for a long while yet. Despite the ups and downs, the falls and the comebacks, the band's more recent albums confirm an untamed, prolific talent, one whose limits often lie in its own excess, but which keeps delivering records of great interest, far from spent.

Contributions by Claudio Lancia ("Modern Blues", "Where The Action Is"), Gianfranco Marmoro ("Out Of All This Blue", "Good Luck, Seeker", "All Souls Hill", "Life, Death And Dennis Hopper")

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