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Rating: A harsh, sharp, tremendously essential expression reveals - right from the cover - a physically mature man still tormented by endless existential doubts.
Van's face, prominently displayed on almost all the sleeves of his work, cannot help but be familiar to us: starting from the mystical-psychedelic ecstasy of "Astral Weeks," through the intense gaze of "Moondance," the rapture of "St. Dominic's Preview," the poignant nostalgia of "Veedon Fleece," the decisive and perfect cut of "Into The Music" - every melodic piece of this great Irish heart has always been accompanied, sealed, completed by images of incredible communicative power.
It almost seems like we know in advance what awaits us, by intuiting with a single glance which phase of Our man's endless inner search we are about to approach. This is why a certain fear accompanies the first contact with this lesser-known and, as usual, potentially hostile album: never had Van The Man displayed such a dry, impenetrable, ruthless gaze as in "Poetic Champions Compose" (1987).
We are at a decisive moment in the career of the Celtic bard: the Irish phase, rich in its own way of hopes and expectations, generous with lyrically extremely happy moments (one above all: "Cleaning Windows"), has recently found its apogee and concurrent decline in the new mystical-existential exploration of the extraordinary "No Guru, No Method, No Teacher" (1986) - of which "Poetic Champions Compose" is a disconsolate, bitter continuation. We are faced with a man now aware that every truth, every definite point is always subject to discussion and challenge. And these pages, with an intensely explanatory title (subtle, painful irony on the presumed truths wetting the pen of "champions of poetry") are a tremendous accusation of naivety that Van inflicts upon himself and at the same time a ruthless monument to existential doubt.
The instrumental opening of "Spanish Steps," an extraordinary atmospheric jazz song, is the most poignant thing Van has gifted us since "Fairplay," with the only difference that here the words, now empty concepts, are replaced by the vibrant and dramatically romantic cry of an alto sax. If the search for love was in vain, then why not "let ourselves go into the mystery," to rely on the consolation inherent in every indeterminate dimension, our Man suggests in "The Mystery"? Only to then plunge again into the harrowing awareness of what is missing and should be there: "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child" is the chilling title of a splendid lament of love in which the artist even stops analyzing and simply calls for help. Just as instead the extraordinary "I Forgot That Love Existed" has no equal in exploring the reasons that have led to this absurd heart atrophy, this paralysis of life itself. If the sweet "Queen Of The Slipstream" is another moment of detachment, of hope and renewed dreams of emotional fulfillment, the most incredible piece is surely that "Someone Like You" about which one could easily write a book. Seemingly just a good warm and smoky jazz-pop song (like almost the entire album, one of the artist's most jazz-leaning), it is perhaps the centerpiece of this phase of Van, the perfect synthesis of a disenchanted romanticism that no longer seeks answers in reality, but comfortably slips into mere satisfaction of the imagination; an imagination that is content with the idea of "having searched all my life for someone like you," meaning by "you" not the concreteness of a female figure, but the portrait the man-artist has always had of her.
"Poetic Champions Compose" is an album musically sweet, varied, a friend of atmospheric jazz as well as Celtic folk, but thematically challenging and intensely deep, a portrait of a man perpetually at the edge of alienation, consumed by the sickness of love, always uncertain whether he wants to heal from it or not ("Did Ye Get Healed?").
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 The Mystery (05:17)
Let go into the mystery
Let yourself go
You've got to open up your heart
That's all I know
Trust what I say and do what you're told
Baby, and all your dirt will turn
Into gold
Let go into the mystery
Let yourself go
And when you open up your heart
You get everything you need
Baby there's a way and a mystic road
You've got to have some faith
To carry on
You've got to open up your heart
To the sun
You know he's looking out for you
'Cause he's the one
Let go into the mystery
Let yourself go
There is no other place to be
Baby this I know
You've got to dance and sing
And be alive in the mystery
And be joyous and give thanks
And let yourself go
I saw the light of ancient Greece
Towards the One
I saw us standing within reach
Of the sun
Let go into the mystery of life
Let go into the mystery
Let go into the mystery
Let yourself go
You've got to open up your arms
To the sun
You know you've got so many charms
It's just begun
Trust what I say and do
What you're told
And surely all your dirt will turn into gold
03 Queen of the Slipstream (04:54)
You're the Queen of the slipstream
With eyes that shine
You have crossed many waters to be here
You have drank of the fountain of innocence
And experienced the long cold wintry years.
There's a dream where the contents are visible
Where the poetic champions compose
Will you breathe not a word of this secrecy, and
Will you still be my special rose?
Goin' away far across the sea
But I'll be back for you
Tell you everything I know
Baby everything is true
Will the blush still remain
On your cheeks my love
In the light always seen
In your head?
Gold and sliver they placed
At your feet my dear
But I know you chose me instead
Goin' away far across the sea
But I'll be back for you
Tell you everything I know
Baby everything is true
You're the Queen of the slipstream
I love you so
You have crossed many waters to be here
And you drink at the fountains of innocence
An experience you know very well
07 Someone Like You (04:08)
I've been searchin' a long time
for someone exactly like you
I've been travelling all around the world
waiting for you to come through
someone like you
will make it all worthwhile
someone like you
keep me satisfied
someone exactly like you
I've been travellin' a hard road
baby, lookin' for someone exactly like you
i've been carrying my heavy load
waitin' for the light to come shining through
someone like you
will make it all worthwhile
someone like you
keep me satisfied
someone exactly like you
I've been doing some soul searching
find out where you're at
i've been up and down the highway
and all kinds of foreign lands
someone like you
will make it all worthwhile
someone like you
keep me satisfied
someone exactly like you
I've been all around the world
marching to the beat of a different drum
but just lately ive realized
baby the best is yet to come...
someone like you
will make it all worthwhile
someone like you
keep me satisfied
someone exactly like you
the best is yet to come...
10 Did Ye Get Healed? (04:08)
(Van Morrison)
I wanna know did you get the feelin'?
Did you get it down in your soul?
I wanna know did you get the feelin'?
And did the feelin' grow?
Sometimes, when the spirit moves me
I can do many wondrous things
I wanna know when the spirit moves you
Did ye get healed?
I began to realise
It manifest in my life
In oh, so many ways
Every day I wanna talk about it
And walk about it
Everyday I wanna be closer
I wanna know did you get the feelin'?
Did you get it down in your soul?
I wanna know did you get the feelin'?
Did ye get healed?
I began to realise
Magic in my life
See it manifest in oh, so many ways
Every day is gettin' better and better
I wanna be daily walking close
It gets stronger when you get the feelin'
When you get it down in your soul
And it makes you feel good
And it makes you feel whole
When the spirit moves you
And it fills you through and through
Every morning and at the break of day
Did ye get healed?
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