Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

It is with the precious salute of acknowledged respect that one can take an album and relish in the change, even if ever so slight, in appearance between the new sound on the block and the established, the in your ears reliable resonance that you feel as though you know you are always going to want.

Respect is one that may be demanded but it takes a special band to receive it, outstanding when the feel of the poet’s heart is turned in a different direction and yet still find a way to sound as enchanting as it ever did. It is the poet that resides with honour in the soul of Mike Scott that makes the music so accessible and with The Waterboys latest album, Out Of All This Blue, the poet turns a new page, clears his throat and instead of the genius behind the last two studio albums, the fantastic An Appointment With Mr. Yeats and Modern Blues, there stands the mastermind, the intelligence and gift of performance that comes with the inquisitive and architectural mind.

It is respect that the listener applauds wholeheartedly, to take the difference between the time in the studio and revel in it, for to do anything else is not just futile, it is also admitting that you have no way of dealing with the change of pace in the poet’s thoughts and beautiful delivery.

With 23 songs available across the double album, The Waterboys really tackle the change with a sense of experimental joy, the poetry flows in a different way that is for sure but it emerges at the same mouth of the falls unhurried by the path that has gone before.

The tracks do exactly what the title promises; they reach a different hue and tone, they act like the lover you never thought you could woo but instead the tracks chase you, they make you feel the tingle of description and poetic endeavour throughout.

In the songs If I Was Your Boyfriend, New York I Love You, The Girl In The Window Chair, the exceptional Nashville, Tennessee, the patient surprise of Kinky’s History Lesson, The Elegant Companion and The Connemara Fox, The Waterboys give a lesson in continuality whilst never once standing still. The poet is always there and in Mike Scott there are few that can equal him.

Ian D. Hall