This Is the Sea is the third studio album by the Waterboys, released on 16 September 1985 by Ensign Records. The last of their "Big Music" albums, it is considered by critics to be the finest album of the Waterboys' early rock-oriented sound, described as "epic" and "a defining moment". It peaked at number 37 in the UK Albums Chart. Steve Wickham makes his Waterboys recording debut playing violin on "The Pan Within" and subsequently joined the band. This Is the Sea is the last Waterboys album with contributions from Karl Wallinger, who left the group to form his own band, World Party.
The album was recorded between March and July 1985, and released that October. Mike Scott, the album's principal songwriter and leader of the Waterboys, describes This Is the Sea as "the record on which I achieved all my youthful musical ambitions", "the final, fully realised expression of the early Waterboys sound", influenced by The Velvet Underground, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, and Steve Reich.
This Is the Sea contains the best-selling Waterboys single, "The Whole of the Moon". The album cover is a photograph taken by Lynn Goldsmith.
A remastered and expanded version was released in 2004. A complete box set of studio recording sessions, demos and live recordings was released as 1985 in 2024, documenting the making of This Is the Sea.
Production history Scott began writing songs for This Is the Sea in the spring of 1984, beginning with the song "Trumpets". Scott recalls that in December 1984 "during the Waterboys' first American tour, [he] bought two huge hard-bound books... in which to assemble [his] new songs" For the following two months Scott worked on the songs in his apartment, writing the lyrics, and working on guitar and piano arrangements. Scott wrote between 35 and 40 songs, but felt that the nine songs that made it onto the album "were the ones that were intended to be there". The first song from the album to be played live was "Trumpets", on 10 April 1984.
The first recording session for This Is the Sea began in March 1985 at Park Gates Studio in Hastings, England with engineer and producer John Brand. Band members Scott, Anthony Thistlethwaite, Karl Wallinger, Chris Whitten, and Roddy Lorimer performed the new material. Wallinger's home studio heard demo recordings for a number of the album's songs. Some of the recordings, like the ones of the last two albums, are relatively untouched by studio engineering. On other recordings, however, Scott added a drum machine and layered the sound, using a studio technique similar to that of the famous record producer Phil Spector, with help from Wallinger. "Having Karl [Wallinger] in the studio", writes Scott, "was like having a one-man orchestra around. There might have been a This Is the Sea without him, but it wouldn't have been the same – or as good".
The recording sessions continued through June. By July, Wickham, after an invitation from Scott, entered the studio with the band to add his fiddle to "The Pan Within". Produced from the original sessions at Park Gates Studio, along with recordings from Livingston Studios in London, Amazon in Liverpool, Seaview, and The Townhouse Studio, among others, the album was released in October. Peter Anderson, writing in Record Collector, describes Scott as "completely at home in the studio" and writes that Scott "spared nothing on" This Is the Sea.
A remastered version was released in 2004, with a second CD of material from the album's singles, and unreleased tracks from the This Is the Sea recording sessions.
Album promotion This Is the Sea was promoted heavily and reached number 37 in the UK Albums Chart. Neither of the two preceding albums had charted in the Top 40.
The album was followed by tours in the United Kingdom, and in North America as the headliners. Sinéad O'Connor made her UK live debut as a backing singer on "The Big Music" at a concert at the London Town and Country Club. In December, the Waterboys joined the band Simple Minds for a European tour. During the three major tours, the band's lineup began to change, and the album received more exposure than its two predecessors. Mike Scott, however, in a decision that expressed the values he had written about when authoring punk rock fanzines, refused to promote the album and the single "The Whole of the Moon" on Top of the Pops because he would not lip sync, a requirement on the show at that time.
Music video Meiert Avis directed the video for "The Whole of the Moon", using visionary lighting elements based on Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale and his memories of a 1962 theatrical production of Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies. Avis addressed Scott's aversion to lip syncing, by shooting the visuals for "The Whole of the Moon" while capturing a unique live audio performance of the single. Avis later used this technique on several videos with Bruce Springsteen, who shares Scott's aversion.
Song details Themes of the album include spirituality ("Spirit", "The Pan Within"), romantic love ("Trumpets"), and English politics ("Old England"), while the album's eponymous single ("This Is The Sea") utilizes the allusion of the flowing river as a life affirming recognition of constant renewal and regeneration. Michael Tucker, in an article entitled "The Body Electric: The Shamanic Spirit in Twentieth Century Music", lists This Is the Sea as an example of shamanistic themes in twentieth-century Western music. Irish musician Bono includes the album on his "top ten" list, noting "In rock, the word 'poet' gets thrown around a lot. Not here..."
"Don't Bang the Drum", the lyrics of which encourage environmentalism, was released as a single in Germany, with a song titled "Ways of Men" as the B-side. The first draft of the song's music was written by Wallinger. Scott reworked the arrangement, changing its rhythm and "feel", but Wallinger's melody and chords were preserved.
"The Whole of the Moon", one of the Waterboys' best-known songs and their most commercially successful, was first released as a twelve-inch single, and reached number twenty-eight on the UK Singles Chart. The single also contained a live recording of "The Girl in the Swing", from The Waterboys, the band's debut album, an extended mix of "Spirit", and a song titled "Medicine Jack". The latter two appear on the second disc of the album's re-release. When the single was reissued in 1990, it reached number 3, and was awarded the Ivor Novello Award in 1991. Including the 2004 remastered album, the song has been officially released four times.
The song began as a "scribble on the back of an envelope on a wintry New York street", after Scott's girlfriend asked him if it was difficult to write a song, and was unfinished at the beginning of the recording sessions, eventually being completed in May 1985. The song, like the Waterboys' first single "A Girl Called Johnny" is a tribute to an inspirational figure. In each line, the singer describes his own perspective and immediately contrasts it with that of the song's subject, summarizing the difference with the line "I saw the crescent / You saw the whole of the moon". "You saw Brigadoon", one of these contrasts, refers to a fictional village that exists only one day every century (from the musical of the same name).
The subject of the song has inspired some speculation. Musician Nikki Sudden, with whom Scott had collaborated before forming the Waterboys, said that Scott told Max Edie, the backing singer for "The Whole of the Moon", that the song was written about Sudden. AllMusic instead suggests that its subject is actually a number of people who inspired Scott, including Christian writer C. S. Lewis and the musician Prince. Scott himself says that he "couldn't have written" the song without having read Mark Helprin's novel Winter's Tale, but goes on to state that the song is not about Helprin (a different song inspired by and named after the Winter's Tale character Beverly Penn was recorded during the album sessions, and appeared on the 2004 reissue). The official Waterboys website's Frequently Asked Questions clarifies that Scott has said that the song's subject is "a composite of many people", including C. S. Lewis, but explicitly states that it is not about Prince.
A feature of "The Whole of the Moon" is the trumpet work on the recording, courtesy of the classically trained Lorimer, who spent three days with Scott working on the song's arrangement. According to Lorimer, he "went home with a tape of the song and thought about a more classical approach. After a while sitting at the piano I came up with the idea of antiphonal trumpets. A piccolo trumpet on the left answered a piccolo on the right and then the same again, growing by adding a Bb trumpet below each side of the stereo picture. Mike [Scott] loved it, except the slightly jazzy chords I had used on the run down at the very end, which he simplified. I used the same classical approach later in the song, mixing two classical-type trumpets behind a later verse." Lorimer also contributes falsetto background vocals to the song, while Thistlethwaite, another brass section member, performs a saxophone solo near the end.
"The Whole of the Moon" was covered by Jennifer Warnes on her 1992 album The Hunter, by Mandy Moore on her 2003 album Coverage, by the band Human Drama on the compilation album New Wave Goes to Hell and by folk singer-songwriter Peter Mulvey on his 1995 release Rapture. It has also appeared on numerous other compilations.
"Spirit", a song praising the resilience of the human spirit, originally appeared on a short, one-and-a-half minute version. A full four-minute version of the song was released on the 2004 remastered disc.
The lyrics of "The Pan Within" are partly derived from meditation techniques ("Close your eyes / Breathe slow / And we'll begin"). It was the first of two Waterboys songs about the Ancient Greek god Pan, which have been played as a medley at Waterboys concerts. Scott describes the song's guitar solo as "[consisting] of a series of phrases or lines/melodies that generally build in an order (which may change), though which includes a lot of improvisation which is different each night. The lines have never been 'tabbed' or written down... The song is in the key of A-minor (the chords under the solo are F – Em – Am – Am repeated)". The second Pan song, "The Return of Pan", appears on the album Dream Harder. "The Pan Within" is the first Waterboys song to feature Wickham's fiddle playing. It was selected as one of DWXB-FM's Hits of 1986. In Southeast Asia, particularly in the Philippines, when the New Wave era started in 1985, the group's biggest hit single is "The Pan Within", aside from "The Whole of the Moon" and "Don't Bang the Drum".
An alternative version of "Medicine Bow" was released as a single in Germany, with an instrumental version of "Don't Bang the Drum" for the 7-inch. The 12-inch contained another mix of "Medicine Bow" and "Ways of Men". Scott writes that he invented the name, and was unaware of Medicine Bow, Wyoming. The album's re-release contains a "full length" version of the song that contains an instrumental "piano storm – from first sonic droplets of rain to final crashing thunder and lightning" performed by Adrian Johnston.
"Old England" is a criticism of Thatcherism, blaming Margaret Thatcher's economic policies for what Scott perceived to be an increase in desperation amongst the young and poor in the England of that time, and a rise in drug addiction, specifically to heroin. The refrain, "Old England is dying" is a quote from James Joyce, and the lines "You're asking what makes me sigh now / What it is makes me shudder so" are from W. B. Yeats' poem, "Mad as the Mist and Snow". The Clash, one of the bands that had inspired Scott during his punk music phase, released "This Is England", a song with a similar theme, as a single the same year. Scott and the Waterboys would move to Ireland the following year.