Let’s go back. Let’s go way, way, way back – to the mystic avenue and the ancient highway; to the days when the rains came and the days of blooming wonder; to Orangefield, Hyndford Street and the Church of Ireland where the Sunday six bells chime. To the days before dodgy anti-lockdown sermonising and endless albums of duets and re-recordings, skiffle, R&B and blues covers. To the time, one might argue, when Van Morrison took his unique and vaulting talents seriously.
Let’s go back. Let’s go way, way, way back – to the mystic avenue and the ancient highway; to the days when the rains came and the days of blooming wonder; to Orangefield, Hyndford Street and the Church of Ireland where the Sunday six bells chime. To the days before dodgy anti-lockdown sermonising and endless albums of duets and re-recordings, skiffle, R&B and blues covers. To the time, one might argue, when Van Morrison took his unique and vaulting talents seriously.
Without wishing to oversell it, the best of Remembering Now – at least half of the 14 tracks – finds Morrison on his finest form since the late ’80s and early ’90s. The title refers not only to the recurring lyrical theme of a man in his eightieth year simultaneously inhabiting both his past and present, but the rich sense of musical retrieval, too.
Throughout, Morrison consciously invokes key moments from across his six-decade recording career, most frequently the lushly meditative landscape of albums such as Poetic Champion’s Compose, Avalon Sunset and Enlightenment, but also the expansive explorations of Veedon Fleece, Into The Music and Common One. As they were on the first of those two groups of records, Fiachra Trench’s simpatico string arrangements are a prominent texture, alongside horns, Hammond organ, Seth Lakeman’s fiddle and warm, gospel-infused backing vocals. What truly stands out, however, is Morrison’s renewed commitment to making (almost) every song count: musically, vocally and emotionally.
“The concept of the flow is beyond thought, beyond analysis,” he said of writing songs for this record and, indeed, it sounds very much as though he has resumed a dialogue with the inarticulate speech of the heart. There is ample evidence of spiritual curiosity being reawakened. The words to the easefully swinging “Love, Lover And Beloved” are taken from a book by Michael Beckwith, leader of Agape, an LA-based spiritual centre. The song ends with a burbling testimony to “my precious one”, Morrison once again trysting at the point where earthly and heavenly love connect. The becalmed contemplation of “Haven’t Lost My Sense Of Wonder”, meanwhile, provides proof of the holy magic Morrison can conjure with just three chords and an ache for the “green fields of summer”.
Remembering Now is not always so thrillingly airborne, but even at cruising altitude it offers a pleasing variety of styles and approaches. “Down To Joy”, which first appeared in Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, makes for a solidly soulful opener in the mould of “Tore Down A La Rimbaud” and “Real Real Gone”. The lithe, jaunty “Back To Writing Love Songs” boasts the closest thing to a pop hook Morrison has produced in many years. “The Only Love I Ever Need Is Yours” is a miniature chamber piece, and one of three songs with lyrics written by Don Black, Morrison’s occasional collaborator in recent years. Black’s words on “Once In A Lifetime Feelings” skew towards bland, but the song itself is lovely, graced by Lakeman’s campfire violin and Morrison’s bluesy guitar picking.
At its midpoint, Remembering Now starts pushing from the foothills towards transcendence. “Stomping Ground” is a wondrous litany of significant Belfast landmarks, its simple elegance crowned by a glorious string arrangement blossoming into Morrison’s heartfelt saxophone solo. He walks the same haunted hometown streets on the snappy, noirish R&B of the title track, in which our man is trapped between all that then and all this now, rapping with a mantra-like intensity. Here, the need feels urgent: “This is who I am!” The stately “Memories And Visions” finds him more composed, back on higher ground, communing serenely with the spirit. Though the energy levels are a tad sluggish, Morrison pushes through to the revelation that “that ain’t all there is…”
“When The Rains Came” is a sparse, stilled folk-blues, a masterful exercise in suspense and atmosphere unspooling over six and a half minutes. While the title references the opening lines of “Brown Eyed Girl”, during the closing moments Morrison is utterly lost in the kind of rapturous incantation – “take my hand, child, walk with me” – which briefly evokes the farthest reaches of “When Heart Is Open” from Common One.
Remembering Now is too long. It could do without “If It Wasn’t For Ray”, a throwaway patchwork of offhand rhymes and rote melody, and the blandly pedestrian “Cutting Corners”. The painfully punning “Colourblind”, meanwhile, has no business breaking the spell Morrison conjures on the album’s home stretch, which peaks with the magnificent closer, “Stretching Out”.
Fulfilling the promise of the title, it’s a nine-minute tour de force which revisits the pulsing musical landscape of “You Don’t Pull No Punches, But You Don’t Push The River” from Veedon Fleece. Morrison fixates on the locale of “Shady Lane”, which one fancies is the totemic magnetic north of his youth, Cyprus Avenue, viewed through the lens of his older self. It’s almost impossibly thrilling, the kind of song you longed for him to write again but never quite believed he would.
“Do I know you from way back?” he keens, wonderstruck all over again. Remembering Now is the deeply heartening sound of an artist recognising himself.
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