Waterboys Offer One OF Most Accessible & Heartfelt Efforts of Mike Scott’s Career Via ‘Where The Action Is’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

For all the expanse of the previous Waterboys’ album—three CD’s containing thirty-four tracks in its most grand form-there was no cut boasting its title Out Of All this Blue. There is such a tune on Where The Action Is, however, and it functions like a subtext to a piece of work as lucid as it liberated. In contrast to its somewhat sprawling predecessor, this fifteenth (!) Waterboys’ album is clearly a simultaneous retrenchment and transitional work for Mike Scott and company – a judiciously edited forty-some minutes of music that sounds every bit the essence of what the band’s titular leader wanted to say and how he wanted it to sound.

The once and future frontman of the Waterboys has rarely been less than ambitious—he did, after all, write a song called “The Big Music”–so this comparatively modest piece (also available as one component of a double set) may cause some of his most ardent followers to pull up short as they find their appetites only whetted for more. Then again, those are the music lovers familiar with the group’s discography who will hear Where The Action Is as an encapsulation of everything they’ve learned to savor about this band, including Mike Scott’s fondness for romantic poetry, in the form of “Then She Made The Lasses O,” and classic literature, from whence comes this album’s longest cut, “Piper At The Gates Of Dawn”

At just over nine minutes in duration, this is no homage to Pink Floyd. Rather, it is yet another nod to W.B.Yeats, a favorite author of Mike’s to whom he devoted an entire recording in 2011 (An Appointment with Mr. Yeats). And, indeed, this solemn, piano-dominated piece of secular gospel is far removed from the rousing rock and roll with which Scott and his merry band kick off this record with such fiery panache: on the title song and “London Mick,” the ensemble immerses its down-to-earth, unself-conscious attitude in loud electric guitars, booming drums and bass (Ralph Salmins and Aongus Ralston, respectively) plus soulful wailing from Jess Kavanagh and Zeenie Summers that, along with Scott’s own caterwauling keynotes the exalting nature of these performances.

The aforementioned “Out Of All This Blue,” a warm and measured exposition of patience, thus comes as a welcome respite from the breathless one-two punch that precedes it. Co-producer Paul Brown interweaves organ with horns on this second of three solo Scott compositions in a row, the  continuation of which appears immediately in the form of “Right Side of Heartbreak (Wrong Side of Love);” those comparably understated expressions, in a similar styles, allow the Waterboys’ founder to introduce a simplicity that’s also many decibels lower than the early portions of the record and the acoustic guitar at the heart of” In My Time On Earth” further consolidates that approach.

But what sounds at first like precious and near-terminal philosophical musing there (as noted by Mike Scott, inspired in part by the mystic Rumi) turns into righteous indignation, steeped in political awareness, by the time it’s over: ‘…we’re deep in the heart of the enemy’s design…just waiting for the breakout to begin…” Little wonder the man refuses to let himself wallow in a nostalgia expressed so affectionately on “Ladbroke Grove Symphony” And it doesn’t hurt one iota that his piano playing on the latter track reintroduces a fresh element to these ten tracks just when it’s needed. Or that the texture of the ivories supplies delicious complement to the fiddle of Steve Wickham, whose longstanding participation in the Waterboys comes second only to it leader.

Elements of hip-hop appeared on the previous Waterboys album, but sounded more contrived than “Take Me There I Will Follow You.” The number actually seems sequenced to jolt the listener out of a false sense of security: for all the stability espoused in the somber ruminations of the aforementioned final cut, Mike Scott will not allow himself or his audience to become insular. And that perspective may account for the comparative brevity of “And There’s Love:” this record lives up to its title in more ways than one, not the least of which is the speed with which it proceeds from beginning to end (in keeping with glossy bright cover images denoting high velocity).

The presence of the lyrics in the album’s enclosed booklet functions at once as a road map and verification of the picturesque journey Where The Action Is represents. One of the most accessible and heartfelt efforts of Mike Scott’s career, it will compel repeated (and no doubt regular) listenings immediately upon completion of the first.

Photo by Xavier Mercade