Van Morrison Astral Weeks (1968){2015

Equal parts blue-eyed soul shouter and wild-eyed poet-sorcerer, Van Morrison is among popular music's true innovators, a restless seeker whose incantatory vocals and alchemical fusion of R&B, jazz, blues, and Celtic folk produced perhaps the most spiritually transcendent body of work in the rock & roll canon…

In his old age, Van Morrison dispensed with any lingering niceties he harbored, favoring bluntness over poetry. That transition is made plain by the title Latest Record Project, Vol. 1, a literal description of the album if not its contents. Latest Record Project, Vol. 1 is indeed Morrison's latest record project as of 2021 – it's called "Vol. 1" because he recorded more than enough to fill a second volume, a remarkable feat considering that this album contains 28 tracks and runs well over two hours – and if that doesn't hint at what the music within sounds like, it's also true that Van Morrison has stayed in his R&B lane for much of the 2010s…

It should come as no surprise that Van Morrison has made an album inspired by skiffle. Van Morrison’s love of skiffle dates back to his childhood. He would hang out at the famed Belfast record store Atlantic Records, where he’d hear early 20th century folk, blues and jazz from the likes of Lead Belly and Jelly Roll Morton. So when he heard Lonnie Donegan’s take on ‘Rock Island Line’ he intuitively understood the music he was creating. Before long, Van Morrison was playing with a skiffle band in school.

Van Morrison never stopped recording during the 1990s, but for a little while it seemed as if he was disconnected from his muse. It wasn't so much his series of jazz cover albums – he'd return to this vein often in subsequent decades – but his songwriting that showed signs bitterness, particularly on 1995's Days Like This, where he seemed dismissive of the very notion of being a songwriter. In that light, it's hard not to see 1997's The Healing Game as a rejuvenation. Indeed, the album's very title suggests that Morrison is in the process of mending fences and reconnecting with a sense of joy, a process that began during his deep dive into Mose Allison and other bluesy jazz artists in the mid-'90s. Morrison retains that sense of swing on The Healing Game – he also retains keyboardist Georgie Fame, who would become a fixture on Morrison's albums over the next two decades – and it invigorates a set of songs that aren't necessarily all that different from what he's been writing as of late; he's still specializing in ballads, blues, and folk-rock colored by R&B.

Pay the Devil, an album-long foray into country music, shouldn't come as a surprise to Van Morrison fans. It's a logical extension of his love affair with American music. Certainly blues, R&B, soul, and jazz have been at the forefront, but one can go all the way back to the Bang years and find "Joe Harper Saturday Morning," or songs on Tupelo Honey that touch country. More recently, You Win Again, with Linda Gail Lewis, offered two Hank Williams tunes and "Crazy Arms." The Skiffle Sessions with Lonnie Donegan offered traditional Southern tunes including Jimmie Rodgers' "Mule Skinner Blues." Morrison's lyrics have also referenced country music blatantly. Pay the Devil comes from direct sources of inspiration: his father's skiffle band and Ray Charles' historic forays into country on the two volumes of Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music in 1962. The evidence lies in three cuts on this disc, all of which Charles recorded: Curley Williams' "Half as Much," Art Harris and Fred Jay's "What Am I Livin' For," and Hank Williams' "Your Cheatin' Heart."