Review: The Waterboys at Astor Theatre
The Waterboys at Astor Theatre
w/ Ella Hooper
Monday, May 11, 2026
The Waterboys proved they’ve still got it with not one but two huge shows at the Astor this week.
Their pro-pagan mystical epics, stemming from an imperial run of four 80s records, were on show, as was the generosity of a live band who play with startling urgency. All those years on the road haven’t been for nought, and Mike Scott led the five-piece with an energetic performance belying his 67 years.
Still rake-thin and sporting a signature cowboy hat, Scott’s ripping guitar solos and soaring vocals were backed by two keyboardists, drums and bass, and no saxophone (surprisingly!). But no worries: Scott was Bono and The Edge all rolled into one, and judging by his smile and lyrics, he may just be the happiest guy in the world, his next adventure never far.
It was all enough to make Ella Hooper swoon in sound check; she told us as much during an acoustic solo set to kick off the show. The opening night on this Australian tour, Hooper has gone country-er than Kingswood and stressed that she’s been looking for a cowboy lover. Rather than revisiting Killing Heidi hits like Weir, her set focused on spritely new tunes, including Growing Up is Hard, When the Shit Went Down and Bad Word, recently recorded in Nashville.
The Waterboys kicked out the jams immediately with the hot-off-the-press, obscenity-laden Trump song Don’t Even Have to Say His Name, released just last Thursday. Along with a string of tracks from latest concept album Life, Death and Dennis Hopper (worth checking out just for the guest appearances), the new material held its own, especially Hopper’s On Top (Genius) about the titular character’s great success directing the biker epic Easy Rider, and I Don’t Know How I Made It in a mid-set highlight.
There was no shortage of hits from the outset, with 90s faves Glastonbury Song and a rocked-up How Long Will I Love You? making way for Medicine Bow—the first of six tracks from The Waterboys’ 1985 masterpiece, This Is the Sea. There could’ve been more songs from 1984’s A Pagan Place, and The Big Music was Monday’s one real glaring omission, but in all it was a great setlist.
Along with Fisherman’s Blues and a mighty cover of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, it was This Is the Sea’s title track, radically performed as an epic Americana rework, that produced some of the most animated singalong moments and an inspired extended outro early.
Keeping the songs fresh is paramount to a Waterboys show, and these updates to classics, adding huge finales and other elements, produced several larger-than-life, almost post-rock-indebted moments of 80s stadium glory. Don’t Bang the Drum took the original’s intro build and dialled it up to 11. A Girl Called Johnny replaced saxophone with rocking keytar solos from producer Brother Paul, and the sound was as full and big as we’d hoped.
Spirit did break with the epic tendencies to maintain the original recording’s touching brevity, but it was a short-lived breather before the finales proper, first The Pan Within and then The Whole of the Moon in an encore for the ages, taking the night out on a blissful high.
As Scott’s signature song, it’s hard not to see the latter as being about him in retrospect: this otherworldly poet-minstrel whose creative flair has never dulled and whose wild passion for life and love continues to shine on stage. We saw the crescent; he saw the whole of the moon. And in concert he was so good we wanted to go back the next night.
HARVEY RAE
Photos by Linda Dunjey
