Astral Weeks opens with the words 'If i ventured in the slipstream between the viaducts of your dreams...could you find me?, would you kiss my eyes?, lay me down, silence easy, to be born again, to be born again' . Pure poetry and a great opening to a lovely cd.
Astral Weeks came out in 1968 to critical acclaim but little commercial success, but since then has been acknowledged by many to be a brilliant piece of music. I've never really listened much to Van Morrison apart from the obvious songs you hear all over the place ('Gloria', 'Brown Eyed Girl') and always thought of him as a grumpy old man. In fact he has shown this to be the case when he decided to ban alcohol when he played the SXSW festival and for his recent tour. Having said that I wish i'd given Astral Weeks a listen before this.
The music and lyrics flow freely and Van's voice floats along with the guitars, drums and flute. The whole cd feels organic and none of the words or music feels out of place. It feels like the music was made by a 60 year old man who had lived a full life not someone who was only 23.
'Astral Weeks' is genius and the best song on the cd. I know 'Sweet Thing' from the Waterboys cover of the song on Fisherman's Blues -one of my favourite cds and love the original more than the cover. 'Madame George' is one of those epic storytelling songs which no one really tries to write anymore (and if they do it isn't half as good).
He recently played Astral Weeks in Hollywood and the cd/dvd is out in February. I'm curious to see how it sounds now being sung by Van as he is in the autumn of his life.
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Very hard to think of anything in my cd collection you won't have listened to already but here's a few you might not have.
ReplyDeleteDeep Forest - World mix
PJ Harvey - Four Track Demos
Indigo Girls - 1200 Curfews
also I think you should do a retrospective on the original Take That and Spice Girls albums
Jonathan
Astral weeks is one of my favourite albums of all time. Glad you liked it.
ReplyDeleteClaire