[7] The first recording session for This Is the Sea began in March 1985 at Park Gates Studio in Hastings, England with engineer and producer John Brand.

Sinéad O'Connor made her UK live debut as a backing singer on "The Big Music" at a concert at the London Town and Country Club.

[8] Mike Scott, however, in a decision that expressed the values he had written about when authoring punk rock fanzines, refused to promote the album and the single "The Whole of the Moon" on Top of the Pops because he would not lip sync, a requirement on the show at that time.

[9] Meiert Avis directed the video for "The Whole of the Moon", using visionary lighting elements based on Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale and his memories of a 1962 theatrical production of Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies.

Avis addressed Scott's aversion to lip syncing, by shooting the visuals for "The Whole of the Moon" while capturing a unique live audio performance of the single.

[10] Irish musician Bono includes the album on his "top ten" list, noting "In rock, the word 'poet' gets thrown around a lot.

Not here..."[11] "Don't Bang the Drum", the lyrics of which encourage environmentalism,[citation needed] was released as a single in Germany, with a song titled "Ways of Men" as the B-side.

The single also contained a live recording of "The Girl in the Swing", from The Waterboys, the band's debut album, an extended mix of "Spirit", and a song titled "Medicine Jack".

The official Waterboys website's Frequently Asked Questions clarifies that Scott has said that the song's subject is "a composite of many people", including C. S. Lewis, but explicitly states that it is not about Prince.

"[16] Lorimer also contributes falsetto background vocals to the song, while Thistlethwaite, another brass section member, performs a saxophone solo near the end.

Scott describes the song's guitar solo as "[consisting] of a series of phrases or lines/melodies that generally build in an order (which may change), though which includes a lot of improvisation which is different each night.

In Southeast Asia, particularly in the Philippines, when the New Wave era started in 1985, the group's biggest hit single is "The Pan Within", aside from "The Whole of the Moon" and "Don't Bang the Drum".

The Clash, one of the bands that had inspired Scott during his punk music phase, released "This Is England", a song with a similar theme, as a single the same year.

Scott notes that he wrote over twenty verses for the song, some of which wound up included on the "alter ego" of "This Is the Sea", "That Was the River", which was released in 1994 on The Secret Life of the Waterboys.

[5] Waterboys chronicler Ian Abrahams wrote that the album and song were about Scott painting, "...a mystical, spiritual route that can be attained simply through letting-go of the mundane and trusting to the sanctity of the inner self."

This song gets right back into the thrust of "Don't Bang the Drum" and comes full circle, rejecting the soulless existence painted in the LP's opening moments and treating it as a journey, comparable with the traveling of the river into the sea.

It's really the sentiment of somebody making a huge adjustment in their life and that really elucidates the theme of the album and points to a crossroads in Mike Scott's creative thinking."

[18] "This Is the Sea" was first performed in Worcester on 2 December 1984,[7] and a longer version than would eventually appear on the album, was played at a benefit concert for miners in February 1985.

"[20] The subject of the lyrics is conflicted about their present ("You've got a war in your head / And it's tearing you up inside"), and nostalgic for a past clarity ("And you know you once held the key").

The chorus line "That was the river, this is the sea" (credited to Mike Scott) features as the epigraph to the final chapter of Andrew Chadwick's book The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power.

"[26] Music Week considered it to go "straight for the epic stuff in an uncommonly well realised manner" and added, "Scott is now a consummate songwriter and while his slightly clipped, almost folky vocal requires some listener tolerance the sheer power of this LP sweeps you away.

"[27] Andy Strickland of Record Mirror called it "a fine LP" and noted Scott's "continued ability to [produce] excellent rock songs".

"[28] Rolling Stone's Parke Puterbaugh wrote, "Mike Scott is more of a poet than a songwriter, yet within his limitations he weaves trances so spellbinding that he has few peers among his musical contemporaries.

"[29] Billboard described it as "punchy rock with an occasionally John Waite-ish lead vocal" and also praised the "imaginative orchestrations" and "solid songwriting".

[30] In a retrospective review, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic noted that This Is the Sea "expand[ed] the epic, multi-layered sound" of A Pagan Place and proved to be "a more ambitious yet more successful record, since it finds Mike Scott at his melodic peak".