Ranking Van Morrison 1970-1979

I’m no devotee, but as I’ve gotten older I accept his conviction that he’s got a mainline to the mystic, especially after the recent reissue/remastering of It’s Too Late to Stop Now; his devotion is Ferry-esque, and as abstract. I’m proud of my holes: I haven’t heard 1977’s A Period of Transition; otherwise he would inflect toward the easy listening. The great critic Brad Nelson hears in in Morrison’s eighties a period as fecund as any before, and I believe him. I’ve tried my best below to make sense of wild nights, Tupelo honey, and fair play.

1. Saint Dominic’s Preview (1972)

I might listen to an album called Van Does Animal Noises! Crows, leopards, chimps, fiddler crabs — whatever his grouchy muse demands. “Listen to the Lion” is a track that can unfurl forever. A devotee of Yeats’ poetry, a believer in the power of recitative and incantation, Van Morrison is the sort of artist whose mediocre albums are hard to distinguish from the good  and the great ones. I love Saint Dominic’s Preview because it genuflects before his elders while surpassing them. And he gets nonsensical over Mellotron like few do.

2. Into the Music (1979)

He spent a couple years chasing the sound of FM radio; on “Full Force Gale” he forces FM radio to come to him and Ry Cooder. It’s hard to make a case for Into the Music when it’s not much different from what preceded and succeeded it; the best I can come up with is the short songs are tight and catchy, amiable even (“You Make Me Feel So Free”), and the long songs earn their pacing (the medley of “And the Healing Has Begun/It’s All in the Game”).

3. Veedon Fleece (1974)

What he’s on about in these tracks I’ve no idea — excuses for slathering them in falsetto and flute? But so many of these things define “limpid” that he’s inventing a new kind of folk music; it’s what I would imagine dells and steams sounded like if they talked to each other, and who knows, perhaps they do. “Who Was That Masked Man?” and “Fair Play” and especially “Linden Arden Stole the Highlights” glisten. He might’ve ended his career with this record.

4. Tupelo Honey (1971)

The pop record, rather of its time (I won’t use dated, among my most despised adjectives, but I don’t wanna hear a word from commenters who call synthesizers and drum machines in 1986 “dated”), rather slight too. The Van album I play when I don’t want to concentrate too hard: call it Poetic Champions Compose with heartbeats accelerating. The hard acoustic riffing “(Straight to Your Heart) Like a Cannonball” and the Southern Comfort-dropping “Moonshine Whiskey” are my favorites. Contrarian Take: I prefer John Mellencamp and Meshell Ndegeocello’s “Wild Nights” cover.

5. His Band and the Street Choir (1970)

“Domino.” It’s on it. So is “I’ve Been Working,” the live version on It’s Too Late to Stop Now superior.

6. Moondance (1970)

“And It Stoned Me” (worthy of Jelly Roll),” “Moondance” (take a bow, Michael Bublé), “Crazy Love” (bask in Bryan Ferry’s definitive cover), “Into the Mystic,” classics all, compensating for a second side which after “Come Running” is as innocuous as anything from the 1980s. I wouldn’t turn it off, though.

7. Hard Nose the Highway (1973)

How on earth can anyone dismiss an album with a sleeve this fabulous? And the music matches it in overstuffed weirdness: on “Snow in San Anselmo.” John Laplante’s guitar does that Robbie Robertson picking-at-a-scab thing while the Oakland Symphony Chamber Chorus imitates a Mellotron. “Warm Love,” innocuous and pretty, was the top forty single, the title track a self-conscious plagiarism of the previous album’s title track. Morrison turns himself into a Van Morrison Song Generator until Kermit the Frog’s manifesto forces an inward turn.

8. Wavelength (1978)

Most of the record sounds like an accommodation to Carter-era AM; I can almost hear Springsteen in “Kingdom Hall.” The title track was the only kinda hit, and I prefer “Natalia,” which evokes Morrison’s mixed-up idea of what top forty radio should play: Lou Rawls fronting Jimmy Buffett’s band.