VAN MORRISON - REMEMBERING NOW
As we celebrated his 80th birthday Van Morrison appeared with an album that can rank up there with some of his best... it was a sweet surprise...
Van Morrison is at it again. Last summer his live concert from 10 years previous in his old school at Orangefield was a stunner and this summer he releases his best studio album in a long long time.
It is not lost on me that I am listening to these songs just a month short of Van’s 80th Birthday. A singer who has always, since his very first solo record Astral Weeks in 1968 leaned back into memory, is looking back yet again.
If you’ve seen Belfast, Kenneth Brannagh’s Oscar winning movie then the opening track Down To Joy will have your imagination dance on Belfast streets in black and white.
And on it goes… like stepping stones across it, Stomping Ground and Remembering Now throw out enough Belfast street names to keep Stuart Bailie Tours going for another while.
Love, Lover and Beloved reminds us of Van’s ability to eke out the outer reaches of religious flavours and draw them into songs. This time it is a poem of Rev Michael Beckwith, a life visioner at the Agape Spiritual Center. It’s a lovely little lyric and with the word Surrender so used and abused in Morrison’s Belfast you wonder about his choice:
Passion brings self-compassion
Surrender starts with yourself
When surrendering forms our thoughts and actions
We walk in harmony and peace
Interesting.
Across the 14 songs there is Van’s usual subjects. There are senses of wonder usually in autumnal gold, there’s rain, there’s ambition of peace, much looking back and hope for something beyond. He even has his gripe, which seems to suggest he only writes love songs for the wages (Back To Writing Love Songs).
There are no new ideas in Van’s heart, mind or soul revealed across these songs but he does give us career long themes passionately in that jazz-gospel-blues rhythm that no one does better than that wee boy from Hyndford Street.
It is however a powerfully solid reflection on the ideas that has filled his soul for 60 years. There’s a positive joyous feeling throughout, even humour in songs like Colourblind.
The playing is beyond equal. It is good to hear Seth Lakeman on a couple of tunes. He brings particular feel to When The Rains Come and Once In A Lifetime Feeling. The latter showcases the vocals of t Dana Masters, Jolene O’Hara and the late Crawford Bell, his long time friend, musical accompanist who died recently and the album is beautifully dedicated to.
The title track weighs in quite late but with a weighty reflection for a man about to celebrate such a sizeable birthday. The voice is as strong as ever, radiating a muse that has sucked us in for so very long and as he sings he is making sweet conclusions:
It’s like you never left back where you started from
In the eternal now
Close your eyes
Feel the prеsence
In the landscapе
Past and always present
Remembering now
Yip, close your eyes and feel the presence and you can have an hour of the eternal now.