release date: Oct. 1970
format: digital (2015 remaster)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,42]
producer: Van Morrison
label: Rhino Records / Warner Bros. - nationality: Northern Ireland, UK
Track highlights: 1. "Domino" (4 / 5) - 2. "Crazy Face" - 3. "Give Me a Kiss" - 4. "I've Been Working" - 5. "Call Me Up in Dreamland" - 7. "Blue Money" - 11. "If I Ever Needed Someone" - 12. "Street Choir"
4th studio album by Van Morrison released only 8 months after Moondance and originally issued by Warner Bros. - here in a 2015 'Expanded & Remastered' edition containing 5 bonus tracks all of which are alternate recordings of tracks already on the album. The style is a bit surprisingly changed to be more traditional r&b-oriented with stress on blues without the same strong folk rock and soul that shaped the predecessor, and it's almost completely without a celtic tone. Surprisingly, 'cause Moondance was seen as his so far strongest album, so why try something else?
Apparently, Morrison initially wanted to make an 'a cappella' album of songs consisting of a mix of new songs and leftovers from the recording sessions for Moondance and Astral Weeks but the backing choir recordings left him dissatisfied, which led him he to a change of mind and had the songs rearranged as more traditional r&b-styled.
The single "Domino", Van's tribute to Fats Domino, has become his best fairing single ever reaching number #9 on the US singles chart list and by that surpassing his signature hit song "Brown Eyed Girl". The album reached number #15 in the US, and has been one of his highest charting albums in the US.
My biggest 'complaint' about the album is that it lacks cohesion. some tracks point to his two most recent and great predecessors - others falls far from that, and the result is a very mixed album, not combining styles, not incorporating but more like a compilation album that reveals his many assets. That said, the album still contains some truly fine songs, although, it never reaches the same artistic level as his two most recent albums, but it does point forward to the style of music that he would later be associated with for the rest of his long lasting solo career, and in that respect it's by no means an album off track.
[ allmusic.com 4,5 / 5, Uncut 4 / 5, Rolling Stone 3,5 / 5 stars ]
