My brothers favourite album (or at least I think it still is). It’s an album that marks the end of the “Big Music” period for The Waterboys, their next album was “Fisherman’s Blues” and that marked a whole new musical direction that I chose not to follow too closely.

The song everyone will know is of course “The Whole Of The Moon”, a spectacular pop song and a #26 hit when originally released in 1985 and then re-released in 1991 (to promote “The Best of the Waterboys 81–90” compilation) when it reached #3.

Just in case you only know The Waterboys from “The Whole Of The Moon” and “Fisherman’s Blues” let me assure you, The Waterboys could rock (see Mike Scott’s statement later). “Don’t Bang The Drum” hangs off a thunderous drum sound and a guitar that prime Banshees John McGeogh would have been proud of, “Medicine Bow” and “Be My Enemy” rattle along with a sense of desperation to make this the most impassioned performance you’ve ever heard.

But there is of course shade among the bright light. We’d already heard “Old England” (along with “Medicine Bow”) on a Radio One session earlier in the year (I still have the recoding I made off the radio) and between that session and the albums release the lyrics changed. The part of the song on the album that now went “Evening has fallen, the swans are singing, the last of Sundays bells is ringing” on that BBC session had been “Hey Bob Maxwell I wrote you this song, About a funny old world that’s coming along…Many things are right but you’re all wrong” which, when you tie it to the rest of the songs lyric, is a pretty scathing take down of the (later) disgraced but notoriously litigious media tycoon. I guess nobody wanted the law suit that would inevitably follow.

“Spirit”, “The Pan Within” and “Trumpets” give us the gentler more spiritual side of this album. It all comes to a crescendo on the title track. Those massed 12 strings are back from “A Pagan Place” but this time the closing song is more hypnotic than its predecessors strident build toward its end.

Me and Deb went to see The Waterboys on a bill with Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe in 2018. I hadn’t seen them live since the late 80’s and the possibility existed that they could play a set full of songs I didn’t know at all. They walked out on stage, Mike Scott spoke “we’re The Waterboys, a rock & roll band” and BOOM straight into this albums “Medicine Bow”. There were a handful of songs I didn’t know but they included in their set “All The Things She Gave Me”, “A Girl Called Johnny” and “The Whole Of The Moon” (of course) from this “Big Music” period. It’s said Mike Scott can be “difficult”, but on that afternoon his Waterboys showed they’s still got it. 

Old England - https://youtu.be/V4CPezSV198?si=LJ35obQQj-Z_bUYa