Van Morrison
Astral Weeks

THE REVIEW

It's tough to review an album that every “history of rock” places among the most significant of the 1960s (and beyond), when instead I have to say that ASTRAL WEEKS… I've grown tired of it and maybe—even—that I never really liked it as the masterpiece it’s supposed to be!

The premise is well-known: after a couple of years in the beat pop scene with Them (“Gloria” being their biggest hit), Van Morrison began his solo career, and this was his second album, released in 1968. Structurally, the idea was to connect a Joycean stream of consciousness to the spontaneous vocal delivery of blues and soul, moving beyond, if necessary, the classic song form (intro, verse, chorus, bridge, interlude, and finale) in favor of a broad, extended, and incantatory narrative freedom, rich in poetic and autobiographical reflections (so, genuine), using scat singing and the repetition of key phrases: almost a Kerouac-like on the road journey through his native Belfast, described in real time à la Jack Kerouac, but with the imaginative verses of William Yeats at hand. So, not a small ambition for our moody singer-songwriter, who—on this front—achieves an excellent result.

The title track, and then “Cyprus Avenue”; “Madame George” but also “Ballerina” and the others: there isn’t one that doesn’t have its own reason to be! He plays acoustic guitar and sings: a voice that’s “not-beautiful,” but sharp and perfectly suited to this kind of song—distinctive and recognizable, too.

Alongside Morrison (in addition to some orchestral additions) is a set of jazz session musicians (the most famous being Connie Kay of the Modern Jazz Quartet, though here I think Richard Davis on double bass is the most effective) engaging in a counterpointed interplay with the soloist, absolutely new and original. In short, a truly refined album, deserving of being in every “great rock music” collection.

I worshipped it for years… and yet for just as many years now, I struggle to listen to it and every time it ends up boring me. There must be a reason why my favorite track (and the only one I can remember without the lyrics in front of me) from this album is that “The Way Young Lovers Do,” which, with its more overt jazz approach, stands out more than all the others!

And it’s no coincidence that the notoriously surly Van “The Man” Morrison, with his next album ("Moondance"), would radically change direction to show us that there’s no need to be so radically intellectual to leave your mark on the hearts of fans. So, with all that said, I can’t bring myself to say that Astral Weeks is… the “Battleship Potemkin of rock”: however, it remains a difficult album, recommended—with a smile—for an adult audience!