Van Morrison - Hard Nose the Highway
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Free Music Notes for Hard Nose the Highway
Free Music Review: seen some hard times...
Hit: 5 Stars
This is one of my favorite albums I first heard it on a record player 8 years ago and the music has haunted me ever since. My husband & I played warm love during our wedding. and now I am able to share its depth with my son who by the way danced to the entire album. It is the perfect wind down album Free Music Review: simple and sweet
Hit: 5 Stars
Warm Love and Bein' Green make this cd well worth every penny. There is no way that you can hear the opening to Warm Love and not feel all cozy and happy inside. As for Being' Green - well, you just want to weep (in a melancholy R.I.P. Jim Henson sort of way. Long live Kermit!) Order this, you won't be sorry.Free Music Review: Powerful, Deep, Spiritual
Hit: 4 Stars
Although I am a fan of all of Van's many periods, moods, and styles, I find myself coming back to this album again and again. There's just a certain depth and spirituality to the music, a passion to the playing, that makes this one stand out as a deeply personal and expressive piece of music-making. For me, this album begins Van's long spiritual quest, in which shorter song structures were abandoned for more open, personal tone poems. This album nicely complements and serves as a bookend to Common One, in which Van takes the concepts explored here, both musically and lyrically, and moves them to the next level. "Warm Love" should have been a hit, "Hard Nose" is, to me, a song of redemption for those struggling through the culture wars and Vietnam, and his version of "Being Green" is strangely affecting. If you have relegated this album to Van's B or C list, I think it worth another spin -- you will not be disappointed.Free Music Review: Mellow Mellow And Bright!
Hit: 5 Stars
There is just something about this album. I'll agree with anyone that it's not in the same category as something like Moondance, Tupelo Honey, and St. Dominic's Preview; but neither is Astral Weeks and Vleeden Fleece. The first three albums (Moondance, etc.) can be considered pop albums for their time while the second two (Astral Weeks...) as well as Hard Nose The Highway can be seen as very personal statements about the artist's life and love of music.
I think the reason why many fan's of Van Morrison don't go to this album as an artistic high point or their favorite is that it doesn't have the emotional extremes that Astral Weeks through Vleeden Fleece have. Instead he touches on the ordinary facets of life with a calm objectiveness that makes for the mellow mood throughout much of the record. The feel kind of reminds me of Frank Sinatra circa 1950's; something like "Song For Swinging Lovers!"
Like Bill Evans (the jazz pianist) the music is very passionate yet not confrontational; instead it is inviting and mature, relaxing yet fun, while maintaining an interesting introspection that is consistent in most of Morrison's work.
Every song on this album is excellent. I always feel quite satisfied after listening to it. Every other album of Morrison's has a couple of songs on it that I either have to be in a certain mood or just don't think is as consistent in it's quality as the other songs. Hard Nose The Highway I have no such complaint; each song is unique yet melody and production-wise relates to each other quite well. I also think it's interesting that he did two covers on this album considering how many songs that he recorded around this time (many of them are on Philosopher's Stone).
Snow In San Anselmo may be the strangest and most experimental song Morrsion ever did. A full choir and very jazzy interludes that follow a somewhat surreal observations. I am especially fond of Autumn Song, it just gently sways in it's on special way, but so does everything on this album....
Overall I think that it took a great deal of confidence for an artist to make an album so cool and mellow. This was 1973 after all. The music of the day was progressive/glam rock which was out to impress the listener with musicianship and bombast. You listen to this and it sets your mind at ease- it looks back on things with a simple fondness and enjoys the present without a worry of tomorrow.
Highly Recommended.
Free Music Review: dig deep
Hit: 5 Stars
This is another great Van Morrison album where he describes with great passion and musicality the struggles and joys of so-called ordinary life and living, there being no such thing of course, as "ordinary life." As in so much of Van Morrison's work, the description is part and parcel of the transcendence. While there are many great songs on this album, including Snow in San Anselmo, Warm Love, Bein' Green and Autumn Song, my own personal favourite is the title track Hard Nose The Highway. It says so much.