VAN MORRISON - Born To Sing: No Plan B

The point of this review somewhat slips through our fingers. Like when you're about to write something about new work by Dylan, Reed or Young, the temptation to just give up is always lurking. What could a thirty-five-year-old hack possibly write about the thirty-fourth album by someone who, in 1978, the year this writer was born, had already churned out twelve albums and two compilations, one of which, "Astral Weeks," has since been reissued thirty-six times and is considered one of the undisputed masterpieces of the modern musical era. Nothing, right? Exactly. Sometimes what's needed is quiet detachment in the face of certain releases. A serene respect for someone who, having reached the venerable age of sixty-eight, instead of playing bocce, picks up his voice, guitar, piano and saxophone and heads back to his native Belfast to unleash a live-in-the-studio record with a highly respected six-piece band. A record that, however you look at it, on its own (whether through craft, experience, talent, genius, or whatever alternative term you prefer) is able to outdo a couple dozen bands and wannabes playing at "resembling" someone, while the original is still alive and kicking. If in Italy we can count, in this respect, Francesco Guccini and Franco Battiato, in Ireland (and indeed the rest of the world) they have Van Morrison. End of story.

Poised between jazz, folk and pop, soul and rhythm'n'blues, the self-referential "Born To Sing: No Plan B" debuted at number ten on the Billboard charts. Among 200 other names, in case that doesn't fully convey it. Obviously, over the years, Van Morrison has lost a bit of that mystical aura that characterized his work up through "It's Too Late To Stop Now," "Veedon Fleece" and that "Into The Music" which stood as the symbolic close of his Seventies. Nevertheless, the artistic body of this latest effort is the expression of a boundless talent, still able to operate at a level of excellence where, for many others, decline would be inevitable.

Unwilling to yield to even the slightest pressure from the music industry, unlike so many of his peers, Morrison continues to be himself, at the mercy of his own inspirations. And while this, on one hand, inevitably confines the sonic range to something merely decent or a touch more, from an artistic standpoint, "Born To Sing" could be seen as yet another summation of his age-old oscillation between the optimism of "Moondance" and the dark pessimism of "Astral Weeks".

Enveloping and moving, as ever, Van Morrison's voice has remained as elastic as it once was, while taking on an unprecedented richness and the weathered grit of a seasoned crooner, shaped (we'd guess) by the years and perhaps a vice or two too many. Here we find ten new tracks pouring out all of pre-Apocalypse Morrison: the usual love of love itself in "Open The Door (To Your Heart)" and life stories (not entirely fitting) for a nearly seventy-year-old in "Going Down To Monte Carlo" and "Pagan Heart". Moments of grandfatherly wisdom-dispensing ("If In Money We Trust") and thinly veiled statements of intent in "Born To Sing" and "Close Enough For Jazz" (actually written over music already featured on 1993's "Too Long In Exile"). But it's precisely this urge to bare himself that constitutes both the strength and, at the same time, the flaw of a record that, at least in places, feels like the soundtrack to a biopic that hasn't been made about him yet. The story of a life in music that, on one hand, gives us sincere, finely crafted songs like "End Of The Rainbow," or the soft, nocturnal "Retreat And View," while on the other comes across as a bit kitsch, like certain Johnny Cash or Tom Jones footage from the early Eighties: clinging to an image by then somewhat "made ridiculous" by endless clichés and even greater expectations. All in the name of not losing one's own artistic identity.

There's an underlying sense of urgency to this record, as if trying to stake out boundaries and seek further validation from his audience. Before it's too late, if possible.

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01/12/2012