Taken from their brand new album ‘Good Luck, Seeker‘, The Waterboys have shared a new video for ‘Postcard From The Celtic Dreamtime’. It’s one of the spoken word pieces from the album, a dreamlike meditation on the Clare coast of Ireland and its mythical landscape and history captured in his mind by a ruined fort and the Aran Islands in the distance.
You can almost imagine Mike Scott hammering away at his typewriter – lyrically, this feels like an exercise in free-flow writing and calls to mind Van Morrison’s Coney Island.
Lyrics:
The storm that has howled for four days
has blown itself out
and the wheels of the world
have begun again to turn
From my window I watch far waves
crashing on the bay
white spray against black sea
distance compressing their dance into slow motion
On the Clare coast I see silver rounded hills
with scarped terraces
a martello tower, a ruined fort
four, maybe five headlands fading south
while westwards the Aran Islands wait for me
dark smoke-like shadows on the horizon
Pantheons of clouds move across the Atlantic sky
like ships, white galleons
chariots or cavalcade of noble kingpins
and patient, lofty queens
slow procession of old gods passing by
Below my house kaleidescope of stone walls
and huddled rooftops
small haphazard fields, wild, untended
a witch-faced woman walking cows uphill
whacking their arses with a long branch
suddenly smiling when she sees me
a rough arm waving
The clamour of voices in my mind
the woman who wonders about me
the men who want me to deliver their dreams
has faded
I can almost no longer hear them
The storm that has howled for four days
has blown itself out
Nothing disturbs the calm
but the rattle of my typewriter
I stop
in the silence the ever-present past
and the ever-passing present
blend with the landscape
to make a flavoured immensity
an atmosphere so strong
that when I step outside
I feel it beat against my skin
and cluster headily round me
as I walk through it
as I breathe it
as I become it
Good Luck, Seeker is out on 21 August 2020 via Cooking Vinyl
CD/LP
1. The Soul Singer
2. (You’ve Got To) Kiss A Frog Or Two
3. Low Down In The Broom
4. Dennis Hopper
5. Freak Street
6. Sticky Fingers
7. Why Should I Love You?
1. The Golden Work
2. My Wanderings In The Weary Land
3. Postcard From The Celtic Dreamtime
4. Good Luck, Seeker
5. Beauty In Repetition
6. Everchanging
7. The Land Of Sunset
2CD Edition
1. The Soul Singer (inst)
2. (You’ve Got To) Kiss A Frog Or Two (inst)
3. Low Down In The Broom (gtr/vocal)
4. Dennis Hopper (Demo)
5. Why Should I Love You? (inst)
6. My Wanderings In The Weary Land (vocal)
7. Postcard From The Celtic Dreamtime (inst)
8. Beauty In Repetition (inst)
9. The Soul Singer (demo)
10. The Land Of Sunset (inst)
Pre-Order the Deluxe version (2 CD): https://amzn.to/32wVBg7