MYSTIC minstrel Mike Scott is in his spiritual element, observing cloud formations and wondering at nature, as he seeks answers to matters of the heart and soul and rails against the lure of materialist status.

This time, on the best Waterboys album since Fisherman's Blues in 1988, he has found his self-aware humour, too, spinning witty couplets and myriad metaphors to leaven the emotional intensity of his fevered work since the band's comeback in 2000 with A Rock In The Weary Land.

"I exchanged the power of love for the love of power," he says in the mournful Strange Arrangement, cursing at himself, but Book Of Lightning favours chasing love and its pains, just as he did on The Whole Of The Moon and now does on the seven-minute standout, She Tried To Hold Me.

The ten songs straddle Scott's trademark wind-swept "big music" (the opener The Crash Of Angel Wings) and the Celtic waltz of Steve Wickham's fiddle (the single Everybody Takes A Tumble), and peak with the rolling piano storm clouds of You In The Sky.

It is a pleasure to lose yourself in this visionary's stirring, mighty music once more, now that he has found himself again.