William Butler Yeats has long been an influence on the song-writing of Mike Scott of The Waterboys, but only an occasional trickle of tracks had directly come from adaptations of the poet’s works. Then, in 2011, came An Appointment with Mr. Yeats - fourteen compositions that use poetry by Yeats as their lyrical source. The idea brought with it a very real risk of embarrassing, cloying, failure - music is not poetry; poetry is not music - but as Mad as The Mist and Snow shows, when treated right, the results can be spectacular.

It helps, naturally, if you have a proclaimed fiddle legend like Steve Wickham on hand to provide sensational energy and drive - in doing so, taking the fiddle far from its post as folksy add-on and dropping it square into the middle of the rock group.