This Is the Sea was the would-be breakthrough album, featuring a transcendently great and downright Roy-Wood-like single in “The Whole of the Moon,” a great U2-ish (and again, anti-war) opener in “Don’t Bang the Drum,” the Dylanish rant “Be My Enemy,” and the epic title song, which closes the album and opens a whole lot of other things:

Now I hear there’s a train
It’s coming on down the line
It’s yours if you hurry
You’ve got still enough time
And you don’t need no ticket
And you don’t pay no fee
No you don’t need no ticket
You don’t pay no fee
Because that was the river
And this is the sea

Behold, the sea!

     Lyrically, the opening title song of Fisherman’s Blues picks up right where “This Is the Sea” left off:

Well I know I will be loosened
From bonds that hold me fast
That the chains all hung around me
Will fall away at last
And on that fine and fateful day
I will take me in my hands
I will ride on the train
I will be the fisherman
With light in my head
You in my arms
WOO-HOO-HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

     Only, everything else is different. Like Dorothy waking up in Oz. The agony and intense soul-searching—and wall-of-sound guitars—that dominate the first three Waterboys album are suddenly replaced by upright basses, mandolins (as well as “fuzz mandolin”), fiddles, flutes, bouzouki, a setting that’s traditionally Irish in any number of places. And again, an overwhelming sense of joy. And wonder.  

     The band has also become twice its original size, although longtime Waterboys Steve Wickham (who’s traded in his violin for fiddle here), and bass/saxophonist Anthony Thistlethwaite (besides the fact that you can’t say his name three times fast, how cool is it to play simultaneously in both Mike Scott’s Waterboys AND Robyn Hitchcock’s Egyptians?) are still on board. Gone, however, is Karl Wallinger, to start his own band World Party (who probably went on to sell more albums than Scott purely on the strength of “Ship of Fools” from the first album). The split was apparently amicable (although you wouldn’t’ve guessed it from listening to the song “World Party” here on Fisherman’s Blues--but Wallinger co-wrote the thing, so who am I to argue?).

     Again, that’s not to say that all things are perfect in ScottWorld, even if he's clearly in a good place. “We Will Not Be Lovers”—carried propulsively if not violently by the fiddle/bass duo of Mssrs. Wickham & Thistlethwaite—for example, sure isn’t your typical song about fidelity:

How your eyes are like tortures
And your presence is bliss
I never knew time
Could speed and zip like this
The touch of your flesh
Is tough to resist
Planets collide, collide, collide
At the smack of your kiss
But you can kiss your brother 
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOO!!!!
We will NOT be lovers

     Again, the violence of the arrangement behind all this (kudos especially to Wickham’s crazed fiddling on the bridge) only amplifies the intensity of the "fleshly" struggle going on in the lyrics.

     Thankfully, we’re given a respite in the serene “Strange Boat,” a meditation on life that puts a more meaningful twist on the old “What a long, strange trip it’s been” Grateful Dead mantra: “We’re living in a strange time / Working for a strange goal / We’re turning flesh and body / Into soul.”

     Things return to their previous hairiness with the aforementioned “World Party.” Again, I’ll take everyone’s word that things are cool between Scott & Wallinger, but Scott’s sure pissed at SOMEBODY, as the guitars (or is that the “fuzz mandolin”?) screech in the background:

 Well it’s got nothing to do with anything that is real
You just believe in it and it’s true…
You’ve got dust in your eyeballs, you got mud in your mouth
But it’s your head, it ain’t mine
I’ve got a madman of my own to contend with
Cursing in the cave of my skull
Turn the other cheek
Find a new streak
Get yourself along to the world party (party!)
HOOOOOOOO!!!

     (Like I said, Mike’s real creative with the whooping here.)

     Next comes the centerpiece of the album, a cover of the Van Morrison classic “Sweet Thing.” Quick: How many covers do you know of that entirely blow the original out of the water? “All Along the Watertower,” and…. and….??? This version completely blows the hinges off the original, going places the single from Astral Weeks (another barely-missed-Top-10 album, BTW) only hinted at. The three-minute original has grown effortlessly to more than seven, without a dead or even less-than-alive moment to be found. Scott wails, cajoles, raptures along.