Van Morrison - Astral Weeks
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Free Music Notes for Astral Weeks
Free Music Review: Astral Weeks
Hit: 5 Stars
Astral Weeks-Van Morrison *****
To lengthly go into discrition of Astral Weeks, Van Morrison's 1970's debut full length album, and not to mention his career best would be more or less pointless. While there will never be enough praise given to an album of this callebur it does not however need the praise.
Astral Weeks is an album that since the enitial release and will well into the future stand on it's own. As said before this stood out like an adult in a daycare center of rock albums when released, well it still does. Such sophistication on Astral weeks is nearly impossible to disect. The poetry of the lyrics rivals some of the best of that era, including the great Allen Ginsberg. The subject matter of love and social commentary are sometimes breathtaking and at other times earth shattering.
But the true amazment of this album is that of the vocal ability the Morrison displays. His soulful R&B style mixed with gosphel tones make for one sweet ride.
The band was told nothing of what to play, "Just to follow as I go," is what Morrison ordered in the studio. They nailed it. It's no wonder Lester Bangs, the worst all time best music critic hailed this as the only thing he would want if he was trapped on a desert island. Pure bliss.
Free Music Review: Misty wet...misty wet with rain
Hit: 5 Stars
I have been listening to this CD for over twenty years now, and I can't say I have every regretted putting it on. It is pure and beautiful. I can remember listening to it one evening and having the distinct feeling it was divinely inspired.
This entire work swirls and pulses; love, joy, regret and sad longing presented in a blurring, timeless expression of one man's faded memories. My throat tightens and my eyes well up before I've made it 2 minutes into "Astral Weeks". This album and two beers and I think I could propose to a stranger.
Free Music Review: Cigarettes and matches in the shops
Hit: 5 Stars
Nowadays the thing that occurs to me when I listen to this off-the-charts album in my cubicle at work is that the diminutive but not unchunky Belfast Cowboy came over to New York City to record it. Sat in a soundproof booth so he did, somewhere in late sixties Manhattan where the session men were very obviously smoking guns for hire, some of them I'd like to believe maybe even holdouts from the era of McClintic Sphere. A number of truly essential things have taken their course in Gotham--this is readily accessible reading material. Or at any rate this is what I am more than happy to accept as the urban death maze's public face and history. Funny old thing, the green and the sere blooming like crazy all in one place. Sigh. It's hard not to have strong feelings about New York--I think Levon Helm had it right when he called the burg an adult dose. I myself lived and worked in that city--not Manhattan though, fork no, Queens and the Bronx, respectively--for twelve years before unapologetically retiring to the suburbs. To live only I might add, probably pointlessly--I am still very much as I type struggling up the footpath to work in the Bronx. It seems to me in any case you don't have to love a city forever, once is enough and the rest is gravy. I read today in the Post that there currently reside in this great metropolis two powerful female real-estate brokers by the names of Hope Faith Consolo and Louise Sunshine. Alarming? I had no time to wonder because on the previous page I had already come upon the word "bumbershoot"--journalistic slang apparently for umbrella--a word I had never heard before and one that, frankly, unsocked me altogether. No wonder Mister Morrison showed up here. Remember when he sang those words, "For instance me, babe" in Ballerina? For some reason I've never forgotten that line and Ballerina isn't even the best song on the album, an honour that goes I suppose to Madame George which I once actually mowed the lawn drunk in the morning to back in 1985--inexplicably less pleasurable than it sounds but still a moment I am loathe to put behind me. Astral Weeks is full of these moments. It seems stupidly obvious to claim that Van the Man can pen and sing with ease the perfect popular song--play And It Stoned Me off of Moondance in a speeding car and at fairly high volume and tell me you're not on the loose in Leitrim--but Madame George is a different lump of spuds entirely. "She jumps up and says Hey love, you forgot your glove." As the dude from Spain sez further on down in these reviews, It won't be never dated. A big diez quatro to you Senor Marquina, I feel more or less exactly el mismo about this record.Free Music Review: Perfection
Hit: 5 Stars
So much raw emotion and incomparable singing here.
Apparently Van sat in a glass booth alone and played acoustic while singing, and the one-off band just followed along. If so, it's even more impressive, but then again Richard Davis' unbelievable bass performance is so free and pure that it almost has to be improvised.
This is a song cycle that begs to be played over and over. Even the Vegas schmaltzy strings on Young Lovers somehow fit into the transcendant folk vibe. When Van gets down to it and sings his ass off (Beside You and Ballerina), I get the shivers, and have for decades now.
Whatever x-factor is, Astral Weeks is soaked in it and dripping forever.
One gets the feeling that Van was in the midst of some experiments here ("Slim Slow Slider, the horse you ride, is white as snow"; Madame George in general; the album as hymn to astral weeks in the mind? Many lyrics suggest it, and his wailing, unencumbered delivery indicates total release on various levels).
However he got there, he got there, and listening to this album all the way through will get you there too. Every time.
AW and Moondance are his peaks, but whereas Moondance is a perfect pop record, this is a brand of soul that is uniquely Van's own, neither perfect nor needing to be. No one has ever recorded an album quite like Astral Weeks.
Van made it to the top of the mountain a number of times, but this is as high as Van, or most any singer, ever got.
Free Music Review: Best Van album
Hit: 5 Stars
PERFECTION!.... I used to sit back in a rocking chair and meditate to this album. It is still the best, but I love almost all of his music. Moondance hooked me but this album made me collect every van cd I could find. I love his music, even albums I did not like at first I listen to again and hear new things. Seeing him in The Last Waltz is the ultimate! Van is the Man, the Belfast Cowboy, his voice is an instrument unto itself. Moondance is stll my all time favorite song but this album is the best.