Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A welcome return to the Biggish Music!, 18 April 2007
I first discovered Mike Scott and the Waterboys back in 1985, the first two albums for some reason had passed me by.
I can still remember the moment, I was browsing through the racks of a record store in Luton (very glamourous!);when my attention was suddenly drawn to the big music blasting out of the speakers.
The song was "Don't Bang the Drum" the stunning opener for the "This is the Sea" album, from thence onwards I've been an afficianado.
The Waterboys last album "Universal Hall" I found to be a mixed bag, whilst I admired Mike Scott for having the courage to commit some very personal and some would say spiritual songs to an album, unfortunately for me it didn't quite hit the spot!
2007 brings us "Book of Lightning" and on the first few hearings it does appear to be a real return to form.
Across the ten tracks of the album, Mike and the band have managed to convey the many intriguing facets that make up The Waterboys.
Part of their attraction to me is the fact that the are so difficult to pigeon hole and can be both enthralling and sometimes infuriating (sometimes on the same album!).
The album commences with a trio of powerful guitar led tracks, but then concludes with quite possibly four of the best songs Mike Scott has ever penned.
The highlights for me being the beautiful "Sustain" that features old compatriot Roddy Lorimer on trumpet and "you in the sky" which first surfaced on the Fishermans Blues sessions back in the late eighties.
Mike's lyrics are particularly biting and humourous, with several "one liners" and put downs that Bob Dylan would have been proud of, it's also nice to see him not taking himself too seriuosly.
In conclusion Mike Scott and his colleagues fiddle player Steve Wickham and keyboardist Richard Naiff have produced an excellent new album and I'm really looking forward to seeing them on tour later this month.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not their best but a good introduction, 27 Jun 2007
The Waterboys new album Book Of Lightning is an excellent introduction to one of favourite bands as it uniquely includes many of the musical styles that lead Waterboy Mike Scot has pedalled over the last 20+ years. Not that you would be able to tell this though from the opening tracks...
The first three tracks The Crash Of Angel Wings, Love Will Shoot You Down and Nobody's Baby Anymore are a return to the mainstream rock of much of the 1993 LP Dream Harder though some may also argue that they are a kind of modern version of the famously monikered Big Music of the 80s. New guitarist Leo Abrahams is consistently present with some fine clipped playing but the fellow who fiddles Steve Wickham is almost entirely absent. Fortunately though Wickham soon makes his highly talented presence felt as the album continues...
Other tracks on Book Of Lightning are more suited to Steve's fiddle playing. These include folk-rock songs in the vein of the Fisherman's Blues LP, Mike Scott's distinctive piano "ballads" and even a nod to the more introverted style of his 90s solo LPs on the closing track The Man with The Wind At His Heels. Of the folk-rock songs, Everybody Takes A Tumble is destined to be a (live) Waterboys classic with its catchy fiddle and organ reels. The other lengthy song of similar style, She Tried To Hold Me is also melodically memorable but contains some of the worst rhyming couplets ever written. The guess-the-next-line game reaches its zenith when Scott rhymes uranium with cranium! So cheesily bad it's almost kind of good...
Thankfully the lyrics are better on the piano-written songs such as the nicely oblique Strange Arrangement and You In The Sky, originally released on the Collectors Edition of Fisherman's Blues in 2006 and newly rerecorded here. The other piano song, the sparse Sustain includes an excellent piercing trumpet solo by long-time Waterboys alumni Roddy Lorimer. It's good to hear him once again on a Waterboys record.
Initial copies of the Book Of Lightning LP include a special limited edition DVD, "The Travels Of The Waterboys: A Unique Compendium Of The Band's On Tour Home Movies". A nice souvenir though the hand-held cameras and snippets of songs grate a bit though a full acoustic live version of The Pan Within at the end of the disc makes serious amends. It's also strange though refreshing to see serious man of mystery Mike Scott larking about so much in the film. Maybe he is a kind of regular guy, albeit a very artistically talented one, after all...
Regular guy, artist or visionary, Scott has produced an excellent album in Book Of Lightning with songs harking back to the various musical styles he has adopted over the last 20 years. It's not perfect yet the best moments are stunning and superb and are well worth a place as an introduction or addition to the Waterboys product in your music collection.
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Daily Telegraph Review, 3 April 2007
To listen to Mike Scott's soulful Celtic voice, grapple with his visionary lyrics and surrender to the wild, flowing abandon of his band in full flight is to touch the very spirit of music. At his best, Scott is as good as it gets. And the new Waterboys album, Book of Lightning, represents Scott at the top of his game.
If quality of work were the only criteria, the man should be a rock legend by now. But if he is famous for anything, it is for blowing chances, turning away from the bright lights down unmarked byways in search of his own truth. "Absorption in music is a way of having a spiritual experience for me," he has said of his wayward career. "Music has a life of its own."
Lyrically, Scott draws from the same rich sources of poetry, folk tale, sacred texts, blues and myth as Dylan. He relishes crunchy couplets and resonant metaphor, and leavens grandiloquent proclamations with humour. He writes with purpose and without waste, each line carrying its own weight.
Book of Lightning synthesises the stages of Mike Scott's journey, blending rock with folk in a 21st-century version of The Big Music. Lyrically, his dispatches evoke the wonders and horrors of our world. Whether summoning the storms of global warming with a sense of Biblical retribution (It's Gonna Rain), heralding the fall of corrupt powers (Love Will Shoot You Down) or musing on survival at the end of the world (the magisterial Sustain), Scott attacks his songs with relish.
With his talent, commitment and mystical otherness, Scott raises the bar for fellow songwriters. The Book of Lightning demands to be heard.
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