I don’t recall where we first saw The Waterboys. It may have been at the Triangle at Aston University in Birmingham, in fact we saw them first on Channel 4 show The Tube after initially being introduced to them by old friend Phil Barlow. I do know it was around the time of this album and it’s one of my very favourite records of the 1980’s (it wasn’t all synths and tutu’s). It’s also my favourite of The Waterboys opening trio of albums.

This time out we have a real drummer throughout, Karl Wallinger has joined the band to handle the keyboards. Mike Scott is still producing but a list of notable recording engineers might help account for the overall improved and consistent sound of “A Pagan Place”. Every song here feels like an old friend I’ve played this record so much over the years. The “she” sung about in “Church Not Made With Hands” and “All The Things She Gave Me” feels like someone I know; the thrill that has gone from “The Thrill Is Gone” feels personal; when Mike Scott sings “Somebody says "Well, hey, what are you waving at?", Well what have I got to lose, Somebody might wave back” I’m thinking "I would"; “The Big Music” is a manifesto in song, the thing Scott is reaching for “I have heard the big music and I'll never be the same, Something so pure has called my name”.

But to me this album hinges on 3 songs. At the end of Side 1 is “Rags” a post punk slash and burn built of crashing guitars and a vocal that sounds like a lifetime of emotion and frustration led to that outpouring. “Red Army Blues” comes at you like an alternative “Song Of The Steppes” and tells of a Soviet soldier in WW2 “seventeen years old, never kissed a girl”, the things he saw and did, his excitement to be going home crushed by the realisation they were all being sent to Siberian prison camps “All because Comrade Stalin was scared that we’d become too westernised”.

The finale is “A Pagan Place”, massed 12 string acoustics play the chords, they never change but they build and Build and BUild and BUIld and BUILd and BUILD to a shuddering crescendo. It’s a masterclass in simplicity and meticulous arrangement in just over 5 minutes

There’s not a song out of place nor anything that outstays it’s welcome on “A Pagan Place”. It’s not held in as high regard as its follow up but this is the one I turn to most often.

Red Army Blues - https://youtu.be/Ncgb8qBbD1U?si=KtfEGWKSzwRfbXIg