[rating=7.00]
The Waterboys’ An Appointment with Mr. Yeats actually predates the concept of the Billy Bragg/Wilco Mermaid Avenue project as well as New Multitudes’ more recent homage to Woody Guthrie. Nurtured by bandleader Mike Scott over a period of two decades, the album’s exalting music, roiling ("The Hosting of the Shee") and reflective ("Song of Wandering Aengus), has its inspiration in the verse of the genius Irish poet William Butler Yeats.
A forthright insistent rhythm section recalls the earliest "Big Music" of Scott’s Waterboys, but inclusion of feathery vocals from Katie Kim and the flute of Sara Allen lend a colorful texture to the sound. Long-time collaborator Steve Wickham’s violin echoes the transcendent themes in tracks such as "New for the Delphic Oracle," the likes of which resurface in "A Full Moon in March" and "Mad As Mist & Snow." And Kate St John’s saxes, along with Blaise Margail’s trombone, lend an appropriately martial air to "Politics."
Electric guitars take precedence in the former number, the rippling echoes of which find reflection in the fulsome singing of Scott. While the source material for this album dates back to before the beginning of this century, it nevertheless remains wholly contemporary. For instance, the inclusion of James Hallawell’s piano mixes delightfully with the acoustic guitar on "Sweet Dancer," where Wickham’s violin reappears to provide an instrumental refrain.
To his great credit Mike Scott never allows An Appointment to turn into merely an intellectual exercise. His voice nearly overflows with emotion during "White Birds," and not just when he intones the lines about ‘…a sadness that may never die….’ The Waterboys’ best music, whether in raucous rock and roll mode of This Is the Sea or the traditional Celtic stylings of Fisherman’s Blues, has always radiated a sense of history, but never more so than here in cuts such as "Before the World Was Made" and "Let the Earth Bear Witness."
But it is not just on those tracks where the group interweaves all its influences in absolutely seamless fashion. It may very well be that Mike Scott’s deliberate long-term process of honing these songs, while continuing his various other activities in and out of The Waterboys, imbues them with such dauntless integrity that in turn makes this recording so gripping.