Search - Waterboys :: Best of 81-90

Too many styles

Big Daddy | Houston, TX | 08/15/2001

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I ordered this CD after having heard several cuts from "Fisherman's Blues," such as "Sweet Thing," "A Bang on the Ear," and the title track. I knew that the emsemble evolved through different styles in these ten years, but boy howdy, I didn't know just how much it evolved. The first several tracks are brash college-band tunes, albeit with Scott's more mature touches. I only enjoyed the more Celtic and folk flavored later tracks, and I therefore find myself skipping through the CD quite a bit. That being said, if you dig the early INXS sound, the earlier efforts are superb. The CD is absolutely an accurate representation of the group's music from '81 to '91, it just wasn't quite what I had hoped. The Waterboys just went through too many phases growing up. Caveat Emptor."

The Big Music

Pieter | Johannesburg | 04/01/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"At their best, The Waterboys matched the brilliance of founder Mike Scott's heroes like Patti Smith and Van Morrison, in creating poetic masterpieces with a spiritual essence/trancendent quality - "the Big Music" as Scott calls it. Examples are the dark, powerful Killing My Heart, the gentle ballad The Whole Of The Moon and the soaring Spirit. At their worst, they gave us singalong Celtic Folk like And A Bang On The Ear and others, but even these are rendered memorable by catchy melodies and the wonderful mix of instruments. Most of the songs fall somewhere inbetween, although the melodic A Man Is In Love and All The Things She Gave Me also stand with the Big Music. I'd really like to give it four stars, but an album with classics like Killing My Heart or Spirit deserves the full five!"