Originally posted by CMIPalaeo:Ah, excellent. I knew nothing of the Waterboys til I heard The Whole of the Moon when it became the pre-show music. I'll give this a listen tomorrow or Tuesday and have some thoughts written up!
Originally posted by CMIPalaeo:Ah, excellent. I knew nothing of the Waterboys til I heard The Whole of the Moon when it became the pre-show music. I'll give this a listen tomorrow or Tuesday and have some thoughts written up!
Originally posted by CMIPalaeo:Ah, excellent. I knew nothing of the Waterboys til I heard The Whole of the Moon when it became the pre-show music. I'll give this a listen tomorrow or Tuesday and have some thoughts written up!
Originally posted by iTim:Back, and back with a bang. It'd be rude not to listen to it after that lengthy introduction. I am a little familiar with The Waterboys, having bought their Best Of off the back of hearing A Girl Called Johnny in Edge's playlist.
Originally posted by CMIPalaeo:Wow, this one blew me away. Thanks, Greg, for introducing me to the amazing album!! The whole review follows...
Don’t Bang the Drum
This song is an excellent album opener! I liked the slow, 'Western' buildup into a real rocker here. I dig long rock-out songs so this one really appealed to me; the lyrics have a really great imagery to them and the song felt like some fast-paced, unhinged Psychedelic Furs spinoff. The ‘oohs’ are really tingly and cool and I love the way the saxophone corresponds with them as the imagery becomes more apocalyptic.
The Whole of the Moon
Epic, beautiful, sweeping Big Music. The sort of thing that just doesn’t seem to be made anymore. I want to say more about this song, but I can’t figure out how, and anyway I know it’d be superfluous. The song says it all itself. Perfection.
Spirit
A lovely little interlude of a song. The way it sort of just builds in and the free, poetic lyric, combined with the brevity of the track make this almost like eavesdropping on a recording session.
The Pan Within
Another long rocker, with a jammier, groovier feel than Don’t Bang the Drum. The repeating lyric ‘close your eyes, breathe slow, and we’ll begin’ adds to the vibe of getting lost and flowing away into the sound. Quite a bit of the picturesque language a la The Whole of the Moon returns but takes a spookier, more atmospheric turn here. This song, especially the piano-based intro followed by the big 80s drums, feels like it’s some gorgeous lost outtake from The Unforgettable Fire era. It has that same sort of ‘getting lost in an experimental sonic world’ thing going on. Those superb, primal ‘oohs’ come back to excellent effect. The lilting violin is the element that ties it all together into on of the standout tracks on the record.
Medicine Bow
I knew by the title this one would appeal to me — Medicine Bow, Wyoming, is an important dinosaur fossil site; the museum where I work has a partial specimen of Diplodocus collected at Medicine Bow in the early 1900s. The Medicine Bow site was a place where dinosaurs would have congregated in a drying floodplain to find the last sources of water, and they died there when the water all ran out. This tune gives me a feeling appropriate to that background — one of desperation, determination, aggression. It was a very cool, ‘wild west’ type of thing.
Old England
The slower one in the middle. This song has a simplistic feeling even though it really isn’t all that simple. There’s quite a bit happening over these five-and-a-half minutes. Something quite Pink Floyd is at play here. This is another example of how intense and effective the imagery on this album is. There are so many scenes to take in here. For me it's the weakest link in the album but it's still a towering song.
Be My Enemy
A delightfully paranoid, aggressive song. It’s got a brilliant reminiscence of hot jazz, with the wailing sax and hammering piano and chopped, rhythmic, repetitively-rhymed lines.
Trumpets
Another one that I get a Psychedelic Furs feeling from. This is a gorgeous love song, I’m very moved by it. The delicate keys in it are quite the magical touch. The zingy sax is quite lifting too. The repeated lyric and solid ‘mmms’ here and there make it seem a bit like an old blues song, but it’s nice to see it being pretty ecstatically happy.
This Is the Sea
The parallels to People Get Ready are cool, they add the spiritual, releasing totality of the song. This is a folksy ramble that surges to epic proportions and acts as a brilliant counterbalance to Don’t Bang the Drum and The Whole of the Moon on the first side.
Overall
This album was stunningly good. I can easily see it becoming one of my all-time favourite records with just a couple more listens, which is pretty cool considering I’d heard ZERO Waterboys songs before a month ago. This is a very 80s record, in the very best way. It’s that kind of big album that just doesn’t seem to come about anymore; that big 80s rock album packaged full of landscapes in Cinemascope. The album deftly blends together folksiness, jazziness, and a slight, pleasant dash of cheesiness to make an amazing listening experience. This a record that’s unpretentious, unironic, and unchained — it soars to great heights and perfectly encapsulates a breed of music that you can’t hardly find no more, songs that are too big for headphones, or a roof, or even this Earth — they have to climb to the moon.
My rating: 5 stars
Favourite tracks: Don’t Bang the Drum, The Whole of the Moon, The Pan Within, Trumpets
Originally posted by blueeyedboy:[..]
Wow, man! I gotta say, I think that i one of the best album reviews I've ever read. You have a knack!
I'm really glad you loved this record. If you decide to delve more into The Waterboys, you'll find that they (he) are an ever changing entity... in the late 80's, tired of the spotlight and disenchanted with the business, he disappeared to the Irish countryside and emerged with Fisherman's Blues, a complete change of direction and a new resurgence to an old style... Also one of my favorite records ever. (If you go back a few pages in this thread, I did this as an album of the week previously)
P.S. - The Psychedelic Furs are one of my all time fave bands, too. If you've never seen them play live, it's worth a trip!
Originally posted by CMIPalaeo:[..]
Glad you liked the review. This album really was a great listen. I generally enjoy writing reviews so Album of the Week will be pretty fun for me...
I'll definitely be checking out some more of The Waterboys in the future!