One of the greatest and most unnoticed musicians of the past 30 years, in my opinion, is Karl Wallinger. Wallinger started as the pianist for the Waterboys – known for their song “Whole of the Moon,” among others.

He left the Waterboys to start World Party – what was intended as a solo project. But he never went back to the old band, and World Party made several really great albums. Unfortunately, Wallinger was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm somewhat recently, and has been fighting his way back from that.

World Party is responsible for some of the most meaningful music I’ve encountered in my over 30 years of closely following nearly all genres of music. He’s a multi-instrumentalist with a more diverse range of ideas in his first album than most musicians explore in their entire catalog.

You may remember the song “Ship of Fools” from 1987 – one of his bigger songs in the US:

karlwallinger.net used to house a huge library of World Party live shows, and today, I went to download a few of them only to find the site was down. So I did some exploring trying to figure out where it went, and what I found out was that Wallinger has a 5-disc set called Arkeology coming out on April 10 of this year.

Wallinger used to have a portion of his site that was called “dropbox.” If you clicked on it, he was always posting random live or cover songs – with a few unreleased ones. I downloaded everything he put there, and now many of those songs, with a bunch of other unreleased and live material, will make up the 5 discs in Arkeology.

For whatever reason, there’s always been too long of a delay between World Party albums for my tastes, so a 5-disc set should make up for some of that. I’m excited to hear the “new” old material, and I hope it turns even more people on to Wallinger’s talent. There’s really something for nearly everyone in World Party’s catalog, and I suspect this latest set will confirm that.

Here’s the track listing for the set:

DISC 1

• 1. “Waiting Such A Long Time”
• 2. “Nothing Lasts Forever”
• 3. “Everybody’s Falling In Love”
• 4. “Where Are You Going When You Go”
• 5. “Photograph”
• 6. “Everybody Dance Now”
• 7. “Closer Still”
• 8. “I Want To Be Free”
• 9. “I’m Only Dozing”
• 10. “No More Crying”
• 11. Interview/”Sweet Soul Dream” (Live Radio)

DISC 2

• 1. “Lucille”
• 2. “The Good Old Human Race”
• 3. “Put the Message in the Box” (Live)
• 4. “Trouble Down Here”
• 5. “Basically”
• 6. “Silly Song”
• 7. “Man We Was Lonely”
• 8. “She’s The One” (Live)
• 9. “Ship of Fools”
• 10. “Mystery Girl”
• 11. “This is Your World Speaking”
• 12. “All The Love That’s Wasted”
• 13. “Lost in Infinity”
• 14. “New Light”

DISC 3

• 1. “Words”
• 2. “Dear Prudence”
• 3. “Call Me Up” (Live Radio)
• 4. “Like A Rolling Stone”
• 5. “Sooner Or Later”
• 6. “Love Street”
• 7. “Time On My Hands”
• 8. “Who Are You”
• 9. “Sweetheart Like You”
• 10. “Another World”
• 11. “You’re Beautiful, But Get Out of My Life”
• 12. “Living Like The Animals”
• 13. “Stand” (Live)
• 14. “Thank You World” (Original Jam)

DISC 4

• 1. “Break Me Again”
• 2. “Baby” (Demo)
• 3. “Ship Of Fools”
• 4. “Put The Message In The Box”
• 5. “When Did You Leave Heaven”
• 6. “Nature Girl”
• 7. “It’s A Pity You Don’t Let Go”
• 8. “My Pretty One”
• 9. “De Ho De Hay”
• 10. “We Are The Ones”
• 11. “World Groove”/”Mind Guerilla”
• 12. “Happiness Is A Warm Gun”
• 13. “Kuwait City”
• 14. “Do What I Want”
• 15. “All We Need Is Everything”
• 16. “Outro”

DISC 5

• 1. “Mystery Girl” (Early Version)
• 2. “What Is Love All About” (Outtake)
• 3. “I Hope it All Works Out For You”
• 4. “And God Said” (Long version)
• 5. “It Ain’t Gonna Work”
• 6. “Another One”
• 7. “I Am Me”
• 8. “It’s Gonna Be Alright”
• 9. “In Another World”
• 10. “Thank You World”
• 11. “Cry Baby Cry”
• 12. “Temple Of Love”
• 13. “Fixing A Hole”
• 14. “Way Down Now” (Live)
• 15. “Change The World”

You’ll note the number of Beatles covers. I’m not sure to what end, but Wallinger has a number of covers in his closet that mimic the originals nearly note for note. But he’s also got a lot of music that never saw a release – until now. I’m sure there’ll be many hidden gems. I can’t wait to hear them.

– My name is Jon Friesch, and as much as I love exploring new music, I still get excited when the talents of the past come back with more great tracks.