In a Special Place (the Piano Demos for This Is The Sea) EMI****

While visiting New York in the winter of 1984, Mike Scott came across a witches’ store filled with arcane accoutrements of the magic arts. Browsing its cluttered shelves, he spotted a large black tome with blank pages for writing spells into. This “book of shadows” was the perfect place for his lyrics, reckoned Scott, since they “were only another kind of spell”.

When he set up camp in London's Park Gates studios the next spring to begin work on The Waterboys' third album, This Is The Sea, the book was bursting with new ideas ready to be worked up.

The studio was a converted barn, with a big, high-raftered recording room, in the centre of which stood a grand piano.

Scott spent the first day at the piano, the book open in front of him, recording demos of his new songs. “My co-producer John Brand set up a couple of microphones and got me a canyonesque reverberated vocal sound. We turned the lights down low and I sang everything in the Book,” Scott writes in the sleeve notes.

The finished Waterboys album was rightly praised as a masterpiece, and its lead track, The Whole of The Moon, became one of the biggest indie anthems of the 1980s. The demos were filed away, but 26 years after the Summer of the Big Music, 13 of those stripped-down demos are collected together, including Don't Bang The Drum, The Pan Within, Be My Enemyand an early version of The Whole of The Moon, with the "rain-dirty valley" and other landmarks of this classic song yet to be included in the lyrics.

So, why would we want to listen to some guy banging out his half-finished songs with just a piano when we can listen to the intricately produced completed work, complete with cannonballs, trumpets and – quite often – the kitchen sink?

Because in their raw, unrefined form, these songs sound almost as powerful and invigorating as their full-band versions. Maybe it’s Scott’s full-tilt piano playing, or maybe it’s his urgent, echoing voice, but this session captures a magic moment when the songs made the stag-like leap from page to tape machine.

Not all the songs demoed made the final cut of This Is The Sea, but such quality rejects as All The Bright Horses, The Woman In Meand Paris In The Rainshow that Scott was at the top of his game. And his lyrics were potent and poetical - he may have been Flann O'Brien to Van Morrison's Joyce, but he could still turn a memorable phrase or 10.

The release of these works in progress coincides nicely with the resurgence of The Waterboys as a musical force. The band’s recent An Appointment With Mr Yeats gigs have garnered massive praise, and the band is booked for numerous festivals this summer, including the London Feis. This album gives an intimate peek into the songcrafting process. An appointment with Mr Scott is highly recommended.

Download tracks: Don't Bang The Drum, All The Bright Horses, The Pan Within, The Whole of The Moon