Art Not The Artist Dept. - Van Morrison

Van Morrison [left - Ed.] enjoys self, yesterday

 

Every Van Morrison piece ever written contains the word grumpy. Not this one. Grumpy though he be, I'm not going to fall into the trap of writing him off as grumpy. Nor am I going to repeat the old saying there are two types of people in the world, those who like Van Morrison and those who have met him. I'm above that kind of lazy journalism.

Never his own best friend (he can start a fight in an empty room), Van "Grumpytrousers" Morrison has almost zero capacity for quality control, resulting in decades of eye-roll albums that might have one or two cuts that vaguely remind you of how great, how truly fantastic, he used to be. Not that he gives a fuck what we think. Live, he can still deliver, but as a recording artist he's about as exciting as a roll of damp roofing felt in an abandoned warehouse.

Very occasionally an album slips out, unnoticed in the all-engulfing Zorn-like landslide of product, that's actually pretty damn great. 'Frinstance, the Live At Orangefield album. Original cover was well up to his usual standard of zero-budget butt-ugly, so I done a new one:

Note lens flare reference

 

That wasn't so very hard, was it? This super-swellegant album, superbly recorded at Van's old school in Belfast in 2014, eventually limped out in 2024 to universally good, and well-deserved, reviews. It's an uplifting, joyous, soulful performance from beginning to end, with maybe the best backing vocals the man's ever had. He's in fine voice and great good spirits, performing a set representing his entire post-Them career without relying on "the old stuff", and it all flows like a river.

And there's last year's Remembering Now, which again had an insultingly cheap cover. The idea was fine, so here's a different treatment of it:

The album suffered from rampaging filler bloat, as does all his recent output, so as a service to you, Mister Music Enthusiast, I've cut the tracks which by general consensus are the runts of the litter, and the album now clocks in at a listenable forty-seven minutes, as God intended. And what an album it is. Memorably described as a "stunning return to adequacy", it's actually much better than that, and I think undervalued because it's buried in the sodden mass of aural kelp he's been slopping out since, like, forever. This is caviar.

This post funded in part by The Madame George Corsetry Company. "Discreet service and attentive fittings for the fuller figure - TV and Stage our speciality. Ask to see our range of plus-sized high heels!"