Dream Harder, by the Waterboys: Music Review by Jehana Silverwing

Released on Geffen Records, 1993.

It is always a special treat to discover commercially-available (almost mainstream, even) music recordings which make use of Pagan themes. Mike Scott, lead focus of the Waterboys, has long seemed comfortable with Pagan (as well as Christian) themes. In 1983, the group released Pagan Place, a blues-inflected rock album containing, in addition to the title song, "Church Not Made with Hands", which for this listener hits to the bones as to what my religion is about:

"...but she is in the shadows
ocean and the sand
everywhere and noplace
her church not made with hands
not contained by man."

A couple of years later came This Is the Sea, containing Pagan-oriented songs such as "The Pan Within" and "The Whole of the Moon". This album was also bluesy rock, and worthy of attention.

In subsequent years, Mike Scott and the Waterboys hae explored Celtic music, playing with both traditional and newly-created tunes. I have found all of these albums rewarding, although the Pagan themes grew more subtle.

The current album is definitely back in the rock camp. Mike Scott's voice remains rich and evocative, although his vocal turnings don't usually quite return to the same depth of blues inflections as his earlier albums exhibited. Still, his voice is rich and fits with the Waterboys material more than competently. The music itself is varied: rock, ballad, light blues, and a whiff of Celtic. Welcomely, they accomplish the feat of not sounding like anyone else but themselves, even if "Preparing to Fly" does seem almost too Beatlesque. Dream Harder would be well worth the purchase even without decent lyrics.

Scott's interest in the spiritual life continues on this album. The promo song on Dream Harder is "The Return of Pan", which evokes the god Pan quite satisfactorily. Musically, this is one of the strongest songs on an album with many strong songs.

Dream Harder also contains the whimsical "Corn Circles", about the unexplained appearances of these crop circles recently in the British Isles. While there is a great likelihood that the corn circles are all hoaxes, the Waterboys have good-natured fun with the concept. "Wonders of Lewis" is dedicated to the Christian apologist and fantasy writer, C.S. Lewis, exploring metaphors (as did Lewis) beyond the standard stereotypic Christian set of metaphors. There's also "Glastonbury Song", which I feel is weak, but perhaps further listenings will enable it to grow upon me.

Although the spiritual is often a concern in these songs, most of them are not merely wistful, but contain an affirmative dynamism:

"The new life starts -- Here."

A few songs are probably not spiritual, at least not on the obvious plane. "Suffer" is the declaration of the narrator to shut the door on a person in his past; he empowers himself by refusing to suffer any longer; to move on. The thought that crosses my mind is that the distinction between the spiritual and the profane is more artificial than is sometimes imagined. (Whether Scott intended this turn of thought I cannot say.)

Whether the songs are specifically Pagan or not, whether Mike Scott is himself of Pagan, Christian, or other calling, the metaphors come through as though understood on a deep and intuitive level. They are not merely tacked on. I have heard it said that the excellent folk musician and Scientologist Robin Williamson finds his musical "key" and inspiration via old Pagan and Celtic mythologies, although these are not his religions. In the British Isles and in Ireland, where the Waterboys hail from, the dicotomy between Christianity and Paganism is frequently not as extreme as here in America. It could be that many of the metaphors of Paganism are able to speak to the left side of the creative brain; that the archetypes thus tapped into transcend and color the other religious guises some may carry.

My main regret with this CD is that there are no transcriptions of lyrics.

"Guess whom I've been dancing with...
The great god Pan ... is alive!"