Van Morrison

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."

Not to be confused with the identically titled Parrot Records release, which is a 20-track double-LP set, this is a 13-track single CD set and a U.S. reissue of the Decca U.K. LP from 1982. It would have been less confusing if they had called it "Them's Greatest Hits" since it is primarily a singles compilation…

Magic Time is one of those rare, intermittent Van Morrison records that consciously offers a bird's eye view of everywhere he's been musically and weaves it all together into a heady brew. The last one was The Healing Game in 1997. He's made fine records since (Down the Road, Back on Top), but they've been focused on whatever Muse was pulling his coattails at the time. Magic Time is restless and freewheeling. Lyrically, it's alternately bittersweet, celebratory, and ornery. Like all of his records, notions of the past haunt these songs like familiar specters making sure they are not forgotten. Here, Celtic soul, gritty blues, fingerpopping swing, R&B, and classic pop all jockey for dominance over ten originals and three covers…

Van Morrison has performed many times at the Montreux Festival from the early seventies to the present day. This two disc set brings together two of his finest performances from 1980 and 1974, featuring classic tracks such as "Wavelength", "Moondance", "Street Choir" and "Tupelo Honey". With carefully restored footage and sound newly mixed from the original masters, this DVD shows Van Morrison at his very best.

Blu-ray 'Van Morrison - In Concert' captures Morrison’s intimate 2016 show at the BBC Radio Theatre, as part of the critically acclaimed BBC Radio 2 In Concert series…

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.