Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

The strongly denied words of those that insist that poetry is meaningless often stings in the ears of those who arguably understand the world in greater depth, it happens more than some may think, and yet poetry, perhaps simpler to construct than a novel or most other art forms, but no less devastating when the soul and heart, and the mind connect with it, when it offers a path to vivid imagination, a realm of personal enlightenment, and the chance to feel the universe within the pulse of your fingers, is a truth that is found all around.

They say the world is run on mathematics, but if you sit on the brow of All Souls Hill and contemplate the point of existence, you could find that it is in words, the beauty, the strength, the playfulness, the riddle, the damnation, the passive and the violent expression that frees us from a sentence of lethargy and weariness; on the brow of All Souls Hill, we become alive to the poetry that surrounds us.

For The Waterboys’ latest release, poetry, whether in the appreciation of lyric, spoken temptations, or through the beat of its music, is in abundance; All Souls Hill becomes covered in sunshine, it deflects the dark heart of the imposter syndrome that many artists feel and which many a novice scribe wish to exhaust, and adds its considerable weight to the drama of expression that has been released in 2022.

You would expect nothing but a poetic vision from one of the most poetic men on the planet, but All Souls Hill manages to defy certain expectations, and in an album that is on par with the superb 2011 recording An Appointment with Mr Yeats, there is a gravitas that is full of energy and perception, a dynamic that Mike Scott, along with Brother Paul, James Hallawell, and all that encompasses the band’s sound, including the tremendous backing vocal by Liverpool’s Ian McNabb on Blackberry Girl, carry with charm, wit, and no disillusion to be found within its own soul.

In an album of integrity and vigour, songs that have sat in the sun and eaten the fruit that grow on the steady trees of knowledge on All Souls Hill, The Waterboys have again shown that the poetic form is what inspires the universe and is at the centre of all that matters.

Ian D. Hall