GREAT SCOTT?
NEW YORK—Mike Scott, the 25-year-old Scottish singer/ songwriter/guitarist/producer who leads the Waterboys, balks at the suggestion that his band has anything in common with such Celtic bootstompers as Big Country and the Alarm. “We’re definitely not another Big-Guitar band,” he disclaims.
GREAT SCOTT?
NEW YORK—Mike Scott, the 25-year-old Scottish singer/ songwriter/guitarist/producer who leads the Waterboys, balks at the suggestion that his band has anything in common with such Celtic bootstompers as Big Country and the Alarm. “We’re definitely not another Big-Guitar band,” he disclaims.
Indeed, the Waterboys’ debut LP, A Pagan Place, resonates with a subtlety and charity of spirit that’s increasingly rare in bigleague pop these days. Balancing rock electricity and songwriterly moodiness, Scott juggles spiritual and secular concerns in a manner that frequently echoes the best work of Van Morrison (a comparison which Scott finds flattering). In person, he projects an air of incorruptible integrity and seems genuinely unconcerned with details like fame or money: “I just want to get on with it.”