Melody Maker - May 29th 1993

THE WATERBOYS
DREAM HARDER
(Geffen)

"I've burned my bridges, and l'm free at last, all my chains are in the past. The new life, starts, here!” It takes only those first few words of exclamatory intent and a triumphant smash of guitar to tell you that the fire of life is burning within Mike Scott’s soul again.

This is the album Waterboys fans have waited nearly eight years for. The album we asked for, pleaded for, all but begged for as MikeScott floundered in the mud and mundane. God knows why he's chosen to do it now, and I mean GOD. But bugger the whys and wherefores, let’s proclaim it from the rooftops, "Dream Harder" is a truly monumental return to form.

Mike Scott has rediscovered his muse: "She lives on a rock, surrounded by light, she's young and she's wild, and she's treating me right".

This is Scott the sorcerer of the imagination, the master of the English language - so overwhelmingly back on form that he only has to let loose one of those customary "whoops” to send a thrill vibrating through the entire universe. When Scott feels this optimistic, this in love with life, the world suddenly becomes such a fantastic place. "I get sparks and electric shocks just exploding in my hands," he exclaims in that gorgeous, unembarrassed squeal of incredulous wonder you thought he'd never feel again.

"Dream Harder" is a biographical odyssey: “I've battled my demons, come out on top, I'm gonna love you as hard as l can, l'm never gonna stop," he vows in "Preparing To Fly' and the guitars - electric at last !- scream like a resurrectional choir beckoning him back through the paradisal gates.

Ironically, taking into account its obvious rejuvenative importance, there are few clues to Scott’s geographical re-location further west - from Galway to New York.
An NYPD siren at the fade out of “Spiritual City”, a sitar-driven raga with a pertinent voice-over from fellow jock Billy Connelly (oh yeah, Mike's singing in Scottish again too), the roll call of Greenwich Village clubs laid waste in "The Return Of Jimi Hendrix” and that’s about it.

Instead, “Dream Harder” is rooted in the higher ground Scott inhabits so naturally. From the quasi-mystical cover art by Slow Children singer Pal Shazar, the violet-drenched beauty of “Wonders Of Lewis”, the Arcadians whipping the image of Pan (to make him perform, more autobiography) to the majestic silhouette of Glastonbury Tor set against a thunderous purple sky on the back cover, “Dream Harder” is a psyche-altering explosion of spiritual fireworks.

Now if you think “spirituality” is the prime properly of new age flared fashion victims like Lenny Kravitz (so empty, he'd float away if you borrowed his boots) stop reading now.

Where the inadequates want to be Jimi Hendrix, Scott is content with nothing but the miraculous reincarnation of the genuine article. "The Return Of Jimi Hendrix" is, quite literally, a dream of a song - a series of visions Scott had on the edge of sleep one night in which the guitar god, “snake limbed, athletic driven and dangerous" returns to lay waste to every club stage in Nineties New York. “Even time itself is beaten and confused,” as Scott’s tale trips from his tongue, so alive, so unfathomably romantic in this age of digital-clean surface expression. Jim Keltner's drums - ferocious, crazed and brutal - clatter with a possessed frenzy as Stratocasters explode.

Away from the pyrotechnics, the visible screen of nature, so beautifully evoked and eulogised in “December" all those years ago, is peeled back once more in "Winter”. Desolate, grey and wrapped in a cloud of freezing mist, it heralds the inevitable, stunning sunrise that ignites the fiery twin pillars of “Love And Death”, an obscure Yeats poem dating from 1885 and arranged with precise, loving care.

Many years ago, flushed with the excitement of the journey still before him, Jimi Hendrix told an interviewer: “It would be incredible if you could create music so perfect that it would filter through you like rays, and, ultimately cure.”

Mike Scott has done this. lt’s so brilliant to have him back.

MAT SMITH