"All Souls Hill" : The Waterboys' new release

With four albums since 2015, Mike Scott's work rate is enviably industrious. In fact, this 15th Waterboys album is strictly his 16th, its release deemed so pressing its predecessor remains in the vaults for now. That urgency, no doubt, relates to some of its subject matter, expressed in comparatively witty terms on the seemingly jovial Here We Go Again, which is about humanity's inability to learn from its mistakes, and in more poetic terms on the title track, a galloping but bleak tune about the world's recent descent into confusion. 

The latter's reference to "a monstrous lie told by a charlatan choir" may be opaque, but it likely shares its subject with the fierce The Liar, which doesn't mince its words, though they remain typically poetic - "the liar stood clad in his cloak of victimhood" - and aren't going to go down well with Donald Trump supporters.

But Scott's also enviably determined to reinvent himself, and here he's aided by Simon Dine, who helped reimagine Paul Weller's style in the early 2000s. 

Of the nine track record, Mike Scott says: “All Souls Hill is mysterious, otherworldly, tune-banging and emotional. I made it with Waterboys old and new and my co-producer, brilliant sonic guru Simon Dine.  Its nine songs tell stories, explore dreamscapes, and cast a cold but hopeful eye on the human drama.”