This Is the Sea by The Waterboys

This Is the Sea, the Waterboys' third album, arrived in 1985, and it's the last and grandest blast of what they called "The Big Music". Mike Scott wrote most of it and produced it himself between March and July of that year, chasing a sound he traced back to Steve Reich, the Velvet Underground and Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. He later called it the record where he fulfilled every musical ambition he had as a young man.

It's a torrent of a record, the arrangements surging and swelling like a tide coming in, and Scott preaching over the top with the fervour of a man seeing God in everything. "The Whole of the Moon" is the one that went furthest, their best-selling single ever. It was the last Waterboys album with Karl Wallinger, who left to start World Party, and the first to feature fiddler Steve Wickham, who played on "The Pan Within" and then joined for good. Lynn Goldsmith shot the cover.

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