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Van Morrison: Albums
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In the past two decades, Van Morrison has released an album almost every year. There have been studio albums of new material, covers of songs by mentors like Mose Allison, collaborations like his current album of country standards with Linda Gail Lewis (Jerry Lee's sister) and lots of live recordings. He continues to tour (you can catch him in Europe this fall), usually with a large band. He's even added a second lead vocalist, Brian Kennedy, to help him handle the weight of all that material.
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Backed sensitively by jazz veterans such as Richard Davis, Connie Kay, and Jay Berliner, Van Morrison offers a brooding, melancholy, introspective, and mature debut record. In fact, he must have stunned listeners who'd come to expect the R&B-influenced work of Them or the simple pop of "Brown Eyed Girl." Morrison shoots for a mood and an atmosphere, and he carries it through the album. Most songs feature simple, repetitive two- or three-chord structures that give the album a trance-inducing, hypnotic feel, and until you enjoy a few listens, it almost sounds like one long song.
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Van Morrison will release a new album, Keep It Simple, on March 11 on Lost Highway Records, a Universal Music imprint based in Nashville. Morrison wrote all 11 songs specifically for the album. He released Pay the Devil, an album featuring several country covers, on Lost Highway in 2006. He ... released a greatest hits album, Still on Top, in 2007. Keep It Simple is Morrison's first collection of all-new music since 2005.
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Van Morrison was born in Ireland in 1945. At the age of 15, Morrison quit school and joined a band called the Monarchs and played the saxaphone. He then formed his own band called Them. In 1966, Van disbanded Them and began a solo career. He has since released many albums with his latest being Irish Heartbeat, released in 1988.
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Growing up in Northern Ireland, Van Morrison was fascinated by American rhythm-and-blues. Lending deep emotion and spiritual connection to his brand of "blue-eyed soul," Morrison created a series of R&B-influenced records that were original statements as opposed to weak imitations. On the uplifting Tupelo Honey, he fused his R&B foundation with elements of folk, country, and gospel, producing an album of lasting impact.
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Van Morrison has never been a man to rest on his considerable laurels - live shows have always incorporated healthy amounts of new music, and the public has responded by buying tickets and albums in ever-increasing numbers. So this third volume of highlights from his four-decade-plus career, expansive though it may be, is already a piece of history. But the rich cast of supporting characters it features, including many of Van’s earliest influences, will give fans who came to his work more recently (and helped the first ‘Best Of ‘ make the UK Top 5) a rare insight into Morrison’s richly complex musical make-up.
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