The Waterboys are not so much a band as a vehicle for a multitalented young Scotsman named Mike Scott. And judging from this five-cut mini-LP, his first American release, he's definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Scott's quavering, nervous delivery imparts a sense of tragic inevitability to the songs on the first side, all of which mourn various characters' loss of individuality. In "A Girl Called Johnny," a hit in England last year, a victim of society "discovers her choice was to change or be changed," while "It Should Have Been You" chastises a close friend for some unspecified lapse of character. The antiwar-antidraft diatribe "I Will Not Follow" puts a negative twist on the U2 classic of the nearly same name (and, indeed, voice and guitar sound eerily like Bono and the Edge). But Anthony Thistlethwaite's rousing saxophones and Scott's raw singing lift it to the level of passionate protest.

On the flip side, Scott gets metaphysical. "December" and "Savage Earth Heart" are longish songs, more meditative though no less inquisitive, as Scott, like Van Morrison, goes looking for the proverbial lion in the soul. Scott's wandering pitch, feverish poesy and bracing, minor-key music make his a vision worth sharing: desperate solipsism you can dance to. (RS 424)

PARKE PUTERBAUGH