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The Waterboys & Mike Scott - The Whole Of The Moon, The music of Mike Scott & The Waterboys (1998)

irish folk, rock | Capitol, EMI

Every precious dream and vision underneath the stars | Jan 19, 2002 | by The Sanity Inspector (amazon.com)

I discovered The Waterboys by chance. I caught half of the Romantic march, "The Whole of the Moon" on a program of Eighties pop during lunch in the car one day, and was impressed enough to go buy this best-of package. After playing it through several times, I'd say I like it a lot, but I wouldn't say this music is the most original that decade had to offer.

Mike Scott is a better poet and storyteller than he is a lyricist, and he is a better lyricist than he is a composer. "Red Army Blues" is the most telling example of that hierarchy of gifts.

The closest to an American hit they ever had was "The Whole of the Moon." It's a glorious stab at transcendence, an ode to an artist-who could be anyone from Shelley to Rimbaud to Sid Barrett--overwhelmed by the gods with too many gifts. The song contains a great burst of poetic images, Scott's most successful welding of poetry and rock on this collection:

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

It's a wonderfully ingenuous song, as unlike anything else on the radio in the Eighties as The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" was unique in the Nineties. Yet even here I was left wanting more. Karl Wallinger's frigid, "Prince"-ly digital synths may have given it a contemporary feel when it was released in 1985, but I found myself mentally substituting an orchestral woodwinds section and a rack of tubular bells for his parts. Maybe on the Muzak version...

The album covers in the liner notes show Mike Scott's evolution from an Arcadian Adonis to a ramshackle village folkie, mirroring his musical evolution. Indeed, part of the entertainment value of "The Whole of the Moon" is discerning The Waterboys' roots. Mike Scott sometimes sounds like a nasal Todd Rundgren, and sometimes like one of The Hollies, and, on "She Is So Beautiful", like Bob Dylan. A few of the best songs sound a lot like other songs. "She Is So Beautiful" sounds like Bob Dylan's "Just Like a Woman". "This is the Sea" could be a speeded-up rewrite of Van Morrison's "Listen to the Lion."

It's great that he has such good taste, and it's great that these echoes of those great artists emanated from The Spandex Years. This is a good collection of songs from what was by then a unique band. But given the derivative quality of the music, it's hard to see how The Waterboys could ever have been in the running for Next Big Thing. I'm content to enjoy this as being a reverent musical disciple at his peak, instead.

tracklist

01 The Whole Of The Moon (5.01)

02 Glastonbury Song (3.41)

03 Medicine Bow (2.44)

04 Fisherman´s Blues (4.25)

05 A Girl Called Johnny (live in LA) (4.14)

06 The Pan Within (6.10)

07 She Is So Beautiful (3.56)

08 Rare, Precious and Gone (live) (4.31)

09 Strange Boat (3.05)

10 Red Army Blues (8.04)

11 This Is The Sea (6.29)

12 Higher In Time (real version) (3.07)

13 The Return Of Pan (4.19)

14 What Do You Want Me To Do? (3.01)

15 When Ye Go Away (4.37)

16 Love Anyway (6.41)

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