Van Morrison - The druid of rhythm'n'blues

George Ivan Morrison was born on August 31, 1945 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, into a lower-class family: his father, an avid collector of American blues and jazz records, worked in a shipyard. Van's childhood is soundtracked by Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins, John Lee Hooker: his love of Black music and his passion for singing push young Van to learn the technique of various instruments, such as guitar (to accompany himself), harmonica and sax; instruments he would play in various school bands before landing, in 1964, in the garage-inflected r&b combo Them. With them he records two albums (Them and Them Again) and, in the collective imagination, ties his name to the extraordinary vocal performances on songs like "Gloria" (not released as a single at the time, but still one of the musician's signature tunes today) and "Baby Please Don't Go".

In 1967, after leaving the band to its fate, he moves to America for some paid sessions with the label that had produced Them, Bert Berns's Bang Records, run by the well-fed Jewish impresario and songwriter based in New York, with whom the ornery Van would have more than one run-in.

Tensions between the two intensify when the release of the single "Brown Eyed Girl" (a little tune co-written with Berns, though he isn't credited on the record) sets off a messy chain of events that would cause the musician no small amount of trouble: in September of that same year, Berns releases Blowin' Your Mind, an album assembled from some of the songs Morrison recorded in New York, without asking Van's opinion or permission; the definitive split comes in the final months of the year, followed, on December 30, by Berns's death from a heart attack. The producer's widow would turn fiercely against Morrison, blaming him for her husband's death, to the point of digging up certain bureaucratic irregularities in the documents allowing the musician to remain in the United States: the only way Van has to stay in America is to firmly commit to marrying his girlfriend at the time, hippie artist Janet Planet.

After the troubled circumstances that pushed him into marriage, Morrison wants to start fresh, putting together his own personal backing band: from Boston he moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he plays with a local soul outfit. After barely a year of club gigs in the area, the band falls apart and Morrison manages to keep in touch only with bassist Tom Kielbania, and begins thinking about dropping the electric sound in favor of an acoustic one. Kielbania introduces Morrison to flautist and saxophonist John Payne: little by little, the (jazz-rooted) combo that would handle the sessions for Astral Weeks in the second half of 1968 starts to take shape. The final lineup includes Payne, bassist Richard Davies (a musician of the highest caliber, renowned for having worked with Eric Dolphy, who would replace Kielbania for obvious reasons), guitarist Jay Berliner, percussionist Warren Smith Jr. and drummer Connie Kay. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. reaches out to Morrison, hoping for a repeat of "Brown Eyed Girl", which can still be heard here and there on jukeboxes: everything seems to be steering the singer-songwriter back toward the recording studio.

But Van Morrison is still under contract with Bang Records, by now irreparably hostile toward him; disaster is averted thanks to a deal struck by the musician's new manager, Bob Schwald, who manages to secure the following terms: Morrison would have to include two compositions whose copyright was held by Bang on his new album (and he does, with "Beside You" and "Madame George"), he would have to give Bang a percentage of sales on any singles taken from the record (which is why Warner would decide not to release any at all), and he would have to supply Bang with three new songs a month for a year. This last request, as mocking as it was outrageous, would get a fitting response when Morrison, in a single day, recorded 36 horrible, nonsensical, rambling compositions, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar: legal action was a real risk, but nothing came of it, and for the time being the musician remained free to do as he pleased.

The sessions unfold in a climate of total creative freedom: Morrison gives the musicians no direction whatsoever on what to play, which even starts to irritate Davies, as he would later admit. Still, the friction caused by the singer-songwriter's reticence and surliness never intrudes on Astral Weeks, which stands as one of the great, essential masterpieces of modern music.

Bordering on the nature of a jam session, between September 25, October 1 and October 15, 1968, this extraordinary ensemble of jazz (and often free-jazz) musicians records with Morrison the greatest folk album in history: the singer-songwriter makes a very deliberate selection from the songs he'd kept in the drawer, attempting to give the collection a conceptual structure, one that nonetheless remains rather elusive by the very nature of the music itself.

One gets the impression that he deliberately chooses the melodically simpler songs (the most "difficult" tracks on Astral Weeks have three, at most four chords) so that his phrasing can be as airy as possible, giving free rein to momentary inspiration — both in terms of the voice, which often climbs through emotional ascents and descents and intricate patterns of anticipation and recall that hold entire songs together with an ethereal cohesion. "Madame George" is the monumental example: nearly ten unforgettable minutes without a single dead spot, an ode to detachment with hushed yet simultaneously urgent tones (Morrison would later deny the song was about a transvestite, claiming the original title was "Madame Joy"); another focal point is the title track, suspended in an esoteric, surreal atmosphere, drifting as if on a gentle, barely rippled sea, where the voice is always matched by a perfectly balanced bass counterpoint. The magic returns in "Sweet Thing", with an even more Celtic, ancestral flavour, a splendid love ballad of boundless simplicity and depth. "The Way Young Lovers Do" adds a touch of r&b spice to the relaxed sound of its companion tracks, with a rather tense horn section. The loosest, most elusive song is the moving "Beside You", while "Cyprus Avenue" strips down the twelve-bar blues and transforms it into a Celtic-hymn structure; "Ballerina" actually comes from the Them repertoire (though they never recorded it on an album), while "Slim Slow Slider", chosen by Morrison to close the record, is the seal placed on this immeasurable work, a song that would disappear forever (never again performed live by the artist, nor re-recorded).

The legacy of Astral Weeks is eternal: its sound still doesn't feel remotely dated today, and if it came out now, it would be just as much a masterpiece as it was in 1968.

Moondance (1970) officially opens Morrison's most commercially successful period, as well as his vigorous return to traditional r&b. The choice of "Come Running" as the lead single is symptomatic of a renewed interest in the "Black" component of his style, always concise yet dangerously swinging now here, now there. Gospel ("Crazy Love"), country and western ("And It Stoned Me", a naturalistic ode of the highest order), jazz (the title track) blend together in a language quite far removed from the viscerally shamanic feel of his debut, and therefore decidedly less suited to the weight of the lyrics, which this time are also forced into a more stereotyped diction, with prosodic complexity caused by greater attention to melodic structure: the handful of chords used in the songs on Astral Weeks are replaced here by more refined, more complex solutions, in the name of a slightly showy perfectionism. The atmosphere of the previous record is echoed by the floating "Into The Mystic", one of the album's most touching and incisive moments. Many of the album's songs (especially on the first side) are regarded as true classics of Morrison's repertoire, repeatedly borrowed from and imitated over the decades: infamous is the cover of the title track by the slick, frivolous crooner Michael Bublé.

His Band And The Street Choir (1970) speaks an even more "Black" and impersonal language, driven by the hugely successful "Domino" (No. 9 in the US, a record Van would never manage to beat again); on Tupelo Honey (1971), by contrast, the r&b element (the sparkling "Wild Night") is the exception: by this point the artist is so deeply rooted in his new cultural climate that he builds a "homely", relaxed album, suspended between folk-pop and country, patching up the gaps with self-plagiarism and rewrites (the title track).

Some critics see in Saint Dominic's Preview (1972) a return to the "astral" past of Van Morrison — assuming one can elevate to a paradigm what is, after all, still just a single episode; in our view, however, this opinion is easily dismantled. It rests mainly on the length and sprawling structure of "Listen To The Lion" — actually a rather drawn-out r&b ballad, delivered with a more visceral performance than usual, complete with imitations of the titular animal's roar — and, even more so, on "Almost Independence Day", a sketch of a song stretched out endlessly, built on an acoustic arpeggio that Pink Floyd may well have been listening to at the time. But the heart of the album lies elsewhere: in the gripping title track and the playful "Redwood Tree", which, after all, don't change Morrison's poetics much during this placid period; an overall sense of looseness and excessive lightness irritates the more attentive listener.

On the other hand, Hard Nose The Highway (1973), often dismissed, isn't actually so far below the overrated standards of the period — it simply doesn't contain a single one of the musician's classics: "Snow In San Anselmo", the most distinctive track, is a sturdy chant made solemn by a church choir, perhaps a somewhat clumsy attempt to artificially reconstruct the intrinsic sacredness of his earlier sound. Also worth noting is "The Great Deception", a bitter, rhythmic tirade against show business, born of a tradition that would still find plenty of followers.

It's Too Late To Stop Now (1974, recorded in the summer of 1973), considered by some to be one of the greatest live albums in the history of popular music, is actually a rather messy live record, undermined by performance errors, questionable setlist choices (only "Cyprus Avenue" is pulled from Astral Weeks) and interpretations that are a bit too over the top: amid the yelps, the breaks, the ad-libs and the variations, the songs genuinely risk being crushed under too heavy a weight. A wonderful surprise is a galvanizing version of "Gloria", sung enthusiastically together with the audience.

In 1974 there also came the one-off episode of a return to his homeland, following his divorce from Janet Planet: Ireland pushed Morrison to record his second masterpiece, Veedon Fleece, marked by a more mature, less fanciful touch, yet just as incisive and essential; songs like "Who Was That Masked Man" and "Linden Arden Stole The Highlights" recapture the ethereal, indispensable depth of old, even as they abandon the chaotic jam-session structure of Astral Weeks in favour of a song form viscerally oriented more toward spirit than body.

After two years of almost total inactivity (aside from his appearance at the farewell concert of The Band, immortalized on the double live album "The Last Waltz"), America once again found Morrison on familiar ground with A Period of Transition and Wavelength, minor records that tried to win back the favour of FM radio.

Although he had already returned to London by the time of its release (October 1978), Van Morrison wrote most of Wavelength in America, and it shows: probably his most concessive record to prevailing FM radio tastes, it introduces synth into his sound for the first time (courtesy of Peter Bardens of Camel), heavily so on the title track, which was also released as a single. The appearance of reggae ("Checkin' It Out", "Venice Usa") is perhaps not surprising, but the results don't always rise to the occasion; the r&b-driven opener "Kingdom Hall" is extremely powerful.

The synthesis between the disappointing recent period, marked by an increasingly lavish, commercial sound, and his folk and spiritual roots is achieved by a Morrison in particularly fine form on Into The Music, which takes its name from a biography of the musician published in the early '70s. "Troubadours", dedicated to the love poets of ancient Provence, and the Celtic "Rolling Hills" once again, hark back to the folk tradition revisited on Veedon Fleece, while more powerful tracks such as "Full Force Gale", one of the album's most energetic moments, and "Bright Side Of The Road" give an unprecedented, remarkably accessible dimension to his intimate, profound professions of faith.

Almost all the hymns of the new Morrison are found here, although the sluggishness of the second side dilutes the intensity of these prayers through the noticeably excessive length — for the first time — of "And The Healing Has Begun".

In 1980 Common One picks up the thread, pushing to extremes the positions already radicalized on the B-side of the previous record: cryptic, symbolic, it captures the listener and drags them into Van's chaotic inner world, with songs often exhausting in length ("Summertime In England", "When Heart Is Open"), interspersed with more conventional episodes marked by a liveliness that is no longer merely superficial (suffice it to say that the obligatory r&b number, "Spirit", centres on the immortality of the soul).

In contrast to the complex, convoluted structure of that album is the remarkable, perhaps even excessive, melodic openness of Beautiful Vision (1982), which even finds the musician tackling a piece of instrumental new age ("Scandinavia"); but the most sincere moments are "Celtic Ray", "Aryan Mist" and the splendid "Dweller On The Threshold", which hint at a glimmer of deeper light than the pastoral surface might suggest. On the other hand, one can also detect between the lines a temptation to give in to the fashions of the moment (the opportunistic single "Cleaning Windows").

The point of no return for Morrison's reflective pathos, however, is Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart (1983), split between subdued gospel-like laments ("Higher Than The World", "River Of Time", "The Street Only Knew Your Name") and Celtic-flavoured instrumentals in the Oldfield-esque mould ("Connswater"); the delirium of "Rave On John Donne", a tribute to the poet he so loved, is effectively the songwriter's furthest step toward an ever more uncomfortable, private abstraction — but all the more fascinating for it. The heavy, "synthetic" timbral character, in keeping with the decade's prevailing fashion, does nothing to help the modern listener (though it may have reassured listeners of the time).

Proof of the personal, self-reflective nature of this material comes in the failure of Live At The Grand Opera House, Belfast (1984), which attempts to turn Morrison's inward-looking soliloquy into messianic fervor. A decade on from his first live album, little has changed in the artist's shortcomings on stage: this time, though, the intrinsically capricious nature of the material allows for a few more flourishes.

A Sense of Wonder, released in December, is infected by the same formal flaws running through all of Morrison's work from this period, but it still delivers a few interesting moments. The instrumentals, for instance, are far more convincing than those on his previous studio effort.

No Guru, No Method, No Teacher (1986) marks the watershed between the period of feverish experimentation and that of actual results, and can rightly be considered one of the masterpieces of the artist's maturity. The dismantling of the pompous 1982 backing band brings a lighter sound, finally purged of the excess of synthetic elements and therefore leaner and fresher to modern ears. It also seems clear that Morrison's ambition, presumably sincere, is to give his audience a new Astral Weeks: songs with a simple, almost sketch-like structure, lyrics that are particularly inspired and felicitous, allusive, rich in references, and a structural approach that's airier and less cold or calculated.

Genuine classics tower over the tracklist, such as "In The Garden" (one of his deepest, most touching ballads), "Tir Na Nog" (essentially a rewrite of "Sweet Thing", ethereal and visionary), the romantic and passionate "Here Comes The Knight", and the manifesto-like outpouring of "Got To Go Back".

Unexpectedly, Poetic Champions Compose shies away almost agoraphobically from the expansive horizons of its predecessor, retreating instead into a smoky nightclub atmosphere: even in the more folk-leaning episodes ("Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child", "The Mystery") the air is much thicker. What's more, a good part of the album is made up of jazz-inflected instrumentals ("Spanish Steps").

Hailed as a classic of contemporary Celtic music, Irish Heartbeat (with the Chieftains) is a record that was already old the day it was born, in which the few moments of true rapture ("She Moved Through The Fair", "My Lagan Love") are little more than a muddled echo of the touching mysticism of his peaks.

With 1989 comes a new, serious crisis in Morrison's artistic output: Avalon Sunset is his most crowd-pleasing record since Wavelength, and it even features a highly questionable duet with Cliff Richard ("Whenever God Shines His Light"), steeped in an increasingly glib, sanctimonious spirituality. Thanks to that track and to "Have I Told You Lately (That I Love You)", Van manages to score decent commercial success, after a decade that had been fairly unproductive on that front.

Enlightenment (1990), on the other hand, with even lower ambitions, manages to put together a sequence of thoroughly pleasant songs (the title track, "Real Real Gone", "So Quiet In Here", "Youth of 1,000 Summers"), in the name of easy-listening singer-songwriter fare and an increasingly tame r&b.

The colossal Hymns To The Silence (1991) moves in several directions at once, the last ambitious album of Morrison's career, a double record packed with his most varied material, from nostalgic ballads ("Why Must I Always Explain", the rarefied, stretched-out title track, "Village Idiot") to folk prayers ("Be Thou My Vision") to venomous, jazz-tinged dissertations ("Professional Jealousy"). However, its excessive length and disjointed structure isolate the good ideas in a sea of forgettable episodes, exposing the weakening of the songwriter's inspiration as the new decade dawns.

It's no coincidence that the counterpoint to this titanic effort is the feeble Too Long In Exile (1993), the worst album at the worst possible moment: a series of duets with a dying John Lee Hooker (including a disgraceful rereading of "Gloria") does nothing to improve matters.

While a sumptuous live album comes out (A Night In San Francisco, 1994) alongside a collection of his dreadful Bang-era rip-off songs (Payin' Dues, 1994 — the first of what would become countless such compilations), Morrison seems to take the time to pick up the thread of his career again: Days Like This (1995) isn't a masterpiece, but it's a more than honest record, elevated by a splendid title track.

1996 is the year of collaborations and nostalgic projects: first a live album with no audience, revisiting some jazz classics alongside an ad hoc big band ("How Long Has This Been Going On", credited to Van Morrison, Georgie Fame & Friends), then a contribution to a Mose Allison tribute.

Fans have to wait until 1997 for something new and original to sink their teeth into, but it's no great surprise: The Healing Game doesn't deviate one inch from the low-key path the artist has followed in recent years, and, as if that weren't enough, shows an unprecedented thinness in his songwriting.

1998 brings nothing new either: The Philosopher's Stone, assembled to look like a proper album, is a collection of 70s and 80s leftovers and castoffs, most of them of poor quality. This is Morrison at his most conventional, largely chained to the twelve bars of traditional blues ("Really Don't Know", "Ordinary People"); a few gems can nonetheless be found: the original versions of "Wonderful Remark" (1974, later reused in 1983 for a film soundtrack), "The Street Only Knows Your Name" (1977, later folded six years on into Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart) and a fine outtake of "Naked In The Jungle" (the original, not especially brilliant, is on A Period of Transition).

1999 sees a confident Morrison proclaim himself Back On Top, but it's nothing more than a marketing gimmick: the material is slightly better than what immediately preceded it, but anyone who sees this record as a genuine rebirth has been misled by a flawed reading pushed by the media: at its best moments ("Philosopher's Stone", placed here perhaps to confuse the casual listener; "High Summer"), the quality is at most on par with Days Like This.

Two other nostalgic projects kept him busy in 2000: a live skiffle album with one of the genre's founding fathers (Lonnie Donegan), and a pitiful country album shared with Linda Gail Lewis (Jerry Lee's sister).

Down The Road (2002) is – from its cover art depicting an old vinyl record shop onward – yet another lukewarm revivalist record, though it does contain a couple of masterstrokes in "Meet Me In The Indian Summer" (sturdy R&B buoyed by a sparkling horn section) and the ballad "Steal My Heart Away"; the rest is simply great craftsmanship lavished on songs of little impact.

What's Wrong In This Picture (2003) surprised both critics and fans, as did Morrison's move to Blue Note; the episode would prove short-lived, but it still gave us one of his most accomplished and enjoyable records of recent years: an impeccable set of "black" and jazzy pop, a refined collection of songs that are at times truly stellar (the title track, "Somerset", "Once In A Blue Moon"), yet it also shows how the spiritual breath of albums like Astral Weeks and No Guru, No Method, No Teacher has by now dissipated, making way for the introspective, smoky crooner Van has, deep down, always dreamed of becoming.

The illusion offered by "Celtic New Year" and "Stranded", both on Magic Time (2005), doesn't last long: a sweetener thrown in so as not to upset longtime fans. In truth the record is a clear step backwards, into a stylistic melting pot that, as usual, leads nowhere, resulting in drowsy songs (and performances); perhaps Van the Man really has "sat down" once and for all.

Pay The Devil (2006) is another dreadful album of country and bluegrass covers.

2007 saw the release of a compilation of Van Morrison tracks featured in film soundtracks, titled At The Movies: Soundtrack Hits (2007).

Poised between jazz, folk, pop, soul and rhythm'n'blues, the self-referential Born To Sing: No Plan B (2012) debuted at number ten on the Billboard charts. Over the years, Van Morrison has lost some of that mystical aura that marked his work up through "It's Too Late To Stop Now", "Veedon Fleece" and that "Into The Music" which served as a symbolic close to "his" Seventies. Nevertheless, the body of work on this latest outing is the expression of a boundless talent still capable of playing at the level of excellence.

Warm and moving as ever, Van Morrison's voice has remained as elastic as it always was, though it has taken on an unprecedented richness and the rawness of a seasoned crooner. Here we find ten new tracks pouring out the full pre-apocalypse Morrison: the usual love of love in "Open The Door (To Your Heart)" and life stories not entirely fitting for a man nearing seventy in "Going Down To Monte Carlo" and "Pagan Heart". There are grandfatherly moments dispensing good advice ("If In Money We Trust") and barely concealed statements of intent in "Born To Sing" and "Close Enough For Jazz" (actually written to music already featured on 1993's "Too Long In Exile"). But it is precisely this urge to bare himself that constitutes both the virtue and, at the same time, the flaw of a record which, at least in places, feels like the soundtrack to a biopic that hasn't been made about him yet. It's the story of a life in music which, on one hand, gives us sincere and finely crafted songs like "End Of The Rainbow", or the soft, nocturnal "Retreat And View", but on the other comes off a bit kitsch, like certain early-Eighties footage of Johnny Cash or Tom Jones: clinging to an image by then somewhat "ridiculed" by endless clichés and even greater expectations. All in the name of not losing one's own artistic identity.

After a brief hiatus he returned in 2015 with the self-celebratory Duets: Re-Working The Catalogue, falling himself into the notorious marketing strategy of the duets album. Sixteen musicians, among them Steve Winwood, Mark Knopfler and Michael Bublé, duet with and pay tribute to Van Morrison, but the LP is better suited to a Christmas gift than to anything else.

More albums followed between 2016 and 2018, all very similar to one another, differing only in how they balance jazz, blues and folk elements. Keep Me Singing contains only original songs and leans more heavily on Irish folk tradition. Not only does it feature the fine title track, but at various points one senses a musician who still has passion and the ability to communicate, as in the blues of "The Pen Is Mightier Than the Sword", the smoky nightclub groove of "In Tiburon", or the romantic ballad "Memory Lane".

Between the end of 2017 and the start of 2018 he released, in just six months, as many as three albums. Roll With The Punches is a godsend for lovers of more traditional blues, with ten covers and five original songs. Van Morrison is at ease on terrain he knows perfectly, and the pleasure of playing and paying tribute to his masters is plain to hear. Particularly notable are the two covers of bluesman T-Bone Walker ("Stormy Monday / Lonely Avenue" and "Mean Old World") and the intensely nostalgic title track written by Morrison and Don Black.

Just two months later came Versatile, which shifted Morrison's focus toward early jazz and Broadway-style musicals (the cover of George Gershwin's "Foggy Day") with ten more covers; taken together with the albums before and after, these seem to amount to a kind of personal collection of American popular music classics.

The tribute to American popular tradition continued in 2018 with You're Driving Me Crazy, made in collaboration with jazz musician Joey DeFrancesco. A blatantly vintage operation that would have felt that way even sixty years ago. Here Van Morrison quotes himself with jazzed-up covers of his own songs, such as "The Way Young Lovers Do", taken from the masterpiece "Astral Weeks" – which in this version loses much of the boogie/jazz frenzy of the original – or "Have I Told You Lately", taken from the 1989 album "Avalon Sunset", not exactly the best phase of his career. The title track – written by Walter Donaldson in 1930 – is the legendary "You're Driving Me Crazy", a song revisited over the years by a seemingly endless parade of musicians (ranging from Frank Sinatra to Billie Holiday, from Bill Evans to Ella Fitzgerald). In total there are seven covers of old Morrison songs and eight by other musicians, but all too often the feeling is that revisiting the original versions proves more rewarding.

If since the days of Keep Me Singing the Irishman's output has remained the preserve of a loyal, unshakeable fanbase, the new album released in 2023, Moving On Skiffle, has every chance of reawakening fame and interest even among less devoted listeners, thanks to a project built around the quintessentially English term skiffle, a genre blending country, blues and soul influences, little suited to its American forebears, and often played on instruments fashioned from household objects: pots, combs, metal pipes, jugs.

Moving On Skiffle is therefore not just another Van The Man album, but a lively tribute to the Fifties and to the music that anticipated the arrival of rock'n'roll. A mix of folk, blues, gospel, ragtime, boogie and country. The album is no mere nostalgic gimmick aimed at reviving past glories. Van Morrison puts his voice and an extraordinary band of musicians at the service of a vibrant, emotionally generous and expansive musicality, reclaiming twenty-three songs that marked his own youth. Elegant yet never academic, the album stands as one of the most enjoyable and infectious chapters in the Irishman's immense catalogue.

Ninety minutes in the company of a grumpy Van aren't always the best calling card, but what awaits here is a musician in full-blown euphoria and joie de vivre. There's sweat and dust in these 23 tracks (almost all covers); the live-in-studio recording and the freedom granted to the musicians lend a lightness that's constantly palpable. The breezy boogie of "Streamline Train" preceded the release, immediately making clear the tremendous craftsmanship of Van & co., who have fun reworking the lyrics of some tracks too, with the ever-sharp and untamable political bite ("Gov Don't Allow", originally "Mama Don't Allow"), singing of slavery and poverty with real fervor.

It's in the instrumental reinvention, though, that the album works brilliantly ("Come On In", "No Other Day", "I'm Moving On"), with flashes of excellence bordering on perfection ("Worried Man Blues", "Freight Train", "Green Rocky Road") and a classic like "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", which Van Morrison handles with class, personality and just the right amount of pathos.

It's hard to spot even a slight dip in tension or quality: on Moving On Skiffle there's just enough room to mention further gems like "Oh Lonesome Me", "Streamline Cannonball" and "Cold Cold Heart" before diving back into the magic of an album as brilliant and vibrant as it is unexpected.

Fans of the brilliant, irascible Northern Irish musician have never stopped following his exploits, certain that Van The Man would sooner or later land the blow. The wait is rewarded by Remembering Now (2025). A work born of an artistic and human awareness that the Northern Irish artist underscores in the splendid title track: "This is what I need, back here on the street, back to Belfast, strumming this guitar has taken me very far, this is what I am, this is where we are, this is who I am, this is who I am, this is who I am, remembering now". Those words hold the essence of an artist who can still conjure a sense of wonder with songs brimming with passion even when they run well beyond a reasonable running time. The final nine minutes of "Stretching Out" are gorgeous, and it's good news to discover that Van Morrison is still capable of writing songs that leave a mark with a lightness and a well-crafted pop/R&B verve: anyone who has savored his "Down To Joy", included in Kenneth Branagh's film "Belfast" (2021), already knows its power; for everyone else, this will be the first step toward a reappraisal of the Northern Irishman.

The pop grace of "Back To Writing Love Songs" and the simple but sincere boogie-soul tribute to Ray Charles, complete with vintage organ, on "If It Wasn't For Ray" are certainly not among Morrison's best songs, but they're direct and heartfelt enough to be a pleasure to listen to. What emerges from the many anguished, romantic musical pages scattered across "Remembering Now" is an artist overcome by compassion and love, a musician able to look back on his own past with tough, poetic irony, picking up again from one of his most underrated chapters ("Sense Of Wonder") to weave the harmonic and lyrical flow of this new project ("Haven't Lost My Sense Of Wonder").

Piano, voice and a pronounced chamber-folk arrangement hold together songs that have never sounded so heartfelt ("The Only Love I Ever Need Is Yours", enriched by exquisite sonic details, and "Once In A Lifetime Feelings", with violin by Seth Lakeman), up to the mystical grandeur of the most ascetic Morrison on the excellent "Stomping Ground", a song that packs into five minutes the celtic-soul charm and noir R&B that are his trademark.

The fire and drive of his early years are of course just a memory now, but for an artist on the verge of turning eighty, and author of no fewer than 47 studio albums, it's time to gather memories and feelings and tell them with his usual honesty and singularity. Songs like the sweet "Memories And Visions" and the stripped-down, bluesy "When The Rains Come" do exactly that: offer the cultured, sincere perspective of one of the most brilliant minds in the history of rock music, and the good news is that Remembering Now turns out to be Van Morrison's best album in over two decades.

The release of Somebody Tried To Sell Me A Bridge (2026) arrives unexpectedly soon after, confirming a state of grace and an awareness that once again deserve full praise.

Van The Man has gone back to his roots with the maturity of an eighty-year-old and the energy of a twenty-year-old. A full eighty minutes of visceral devotion to a genre, the blues, that has always been at the heart of the many musical excursions marking the Northern Irish musician's history. The presence of three blues masters like Elvin Bishop, Taj Mahal and Buddy Guy confirms Van Morrison's intent to put, at the center of these twenty songs, a shared passion for music, free of needless virtuosity and with a sound that forgoes any technological embellishment.

The album glides along like an imaginary documentary on the glories of the blues, offering a deep, knowing reinterpretation of many classics, only occasionally diverted by a handful of new tracks that serve the project's overall staging. Much like the unforgettable "Buena Vista Social Club", the album brings together a bunch of "old-timers" (Elvin Bishop and Taj Mahal, 83, Van Morrison, 81, and Buddy Guy, 89) who don't just indulge in their first, unforgettable love but reinvent and adapt it to a conceptually on-the-road vision, alternating vibrant honky-tonk blues ("When It's Love Time" and "Play The Honky Tonks") with superb readings of classics, such as a splendid "Madame Butterfly Blues" and the Muddy Waters super-classic "I'm Ready". The emotional charge and quality of the performances steer clear of any purely retro drift.

There's no shortage of variations on a theme among some of the classics. Van Morrison tackles the sax on the driving "Kidney Stew Blues", flips the perspective of Fats Domino's lively "Ain't That A Shame" by dragging its melody into the arms of gospel-blues, and turns B.B. King's "Rock Me Baby" into the perfect showcase for his still remarkable interpretive and vocal qualities, just a few notches down from the twenty-three-year-old on Astral Weeks.

That new tracks like the excellent "Montecarlo Blues", with Van on exemplary harmonica form, and the title track, an acidic gospel rock-blues, hold up effortlessly against the reworked classics is yet another source of pleasure and wonder. Even when the author ventures into a fluid Latin rhythm on "Social Climbing Scene", everything stays in perfect balance.

Van Morrison has brilliantly come through his fourth age, and he doesn't seem to have any intention of retreating.

Contributions by Giorgio Moltisanti ("Born To Sing: No Plan B"), Valerio D'Onofrio ("Duets: Re-Working The Catalogue", "Keep Me Singing", "Roll With The Punches", "Versatile" and "You're Driving Me Crazy") and Gianfranco Marmoro ("Moving On Skiffle", "Remembering Now", "Somebody Tried To Sell Me A Bridge")

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