The Waterboys

Mike Scott might have been making his "big music" for almost 30 years now, but An Appointment With Mr. Yeats is, for better or worse, very much the album he's been building towards during that time. This isn't Scott's first dalliance with the poetry of W.B. Yeats ― he already set The Stolen Child to music for Fisherman's Blues ― but the sheer ambition of creating an album that captures the grandiose nature of Yeats's words is impressive. And for the most part, it works relatively well because of Scott's intense delivery and the respect he shows the source material. Everything about the album is epic in scale, from the instrumentation to the running time. The songs debuted during a series of live shows over the past 18 months, and in that context some of the more theatrical elements might have worked. But in the studio that's translated into some songs that are verging on overproduced and could really do with some of that sheen removed. However, there is still something rather wonderful about the Waterboys at the top of their game and there are at least half-a-dozen examples of that here, which alone makes it worth a listen.