1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 132. Van Morrison – Astral Weeks (1968)

 

Given the contribution that Ireland has made to music, from Christy Marx to Denise Chaila by way of U2, Thin Lizzy, Sinead O’Connor, The Pogues etc. etc., punching way above its weight as a relatively small country, it’s a surprise that this is the first Irish artist on this list (that I’m aware of).

And Van Morrison is one of that pantheon. The fact that he’s from Northern Ireland, part of the UK, and not Republic of Ireland is probably overlooked when it comes to claiming him as “Irish”, although having lived through the Seventies I know how prickly *that* topic is. He’s still as Irish as Tom Jones is Welsh, being in a non-England part of the UK doesn’t erase that identity.

Anyway, on to this album itself. The tracks on it are all pretty much along the same lines, with ethereal backing music provided by acoustic guitar, flute, violin, I think I detected vibrophone in there at one point. Over the top of this, which is mixed quite low, Morrison explores free-form sounding flights of fancy. His voice, pitched somewhere in the throat with an almost pathological avoidance of fricative consonants sometimes, grounds the tracks and with the wandering backing creates an intriguing dreamlike journey.

Although the music sounds are folky, the playing is more like jazz, with no clear verse/chorus structure, more wandering on themes. On the track Beside You, the acoustic guitar follows flamenco themes. Only on The Way Young Lovers Do does the album veer more into soul, with a boppy horn section lifting the tune aloft.

No Moondance or Brown-Eyed Girl here, and for me the album was better for it – they get played so much that they’re a cliche these days. Sometimes I thought that if you replaced the instruments for a piano, and Morrison for Nina Simone, the tracks wouldn’t sound out of place on Wild Is The Wind (Cyprus Avenue especially).

Morisson also goes nowhere near the “diddly-diddly” cliches of Irish folk (even though on Beside You it sounds at times like the guitar is nudging up against the melody of that Irish theme pub favourite, When You Were Sweet Sixteen), the nearest we get is some nostalgia about Ireland in Madame George.

Because he’s so lauded, I sometimes wonder what all the fuss is about Van Morrison. And although after hearing this I’m still not convinced he’s everything he’s made out to be, I really liked it, a very different soundscape.