A Pagan Place by The Waterboys

A Pagan Place, the Waterboys' second album, came out on Ensign in 1984, and it's the record where Mike Scott's grand vision really started to swell. It was Karl Wallinger's first as a member, Anthony Thistlethwaite and Kevin Wilkinson were in the crew as well, and the title track is where Roddy Lorimer takes his first trumpet solo with the group.

The sound got its name from this album: "The Big Music", after one of its songs, which Scott explained as a way of glimpsing God's handwriting all over the world. That's the feel all the way through, with churning guitars, pealing horns and Scott singing like a man on a hilltop in a gale, going for the sublime and settling for nothing less. "Church Not Made with Hands" and "All the Things She Gave Me" are the ones the countdowns kept. One oddity: the title matches an Edna O'Brien novel that Scott, who picked it, has never read.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.