Van Morrison: Astral Weeks and His Band And The Street Choir

Van Morrison
Astral Weeks (Expanded and Remastered)
His Band and the Street Choir (Expanded and Remastered)
(Warner Brothers/Rhino)
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Even with the luxury 45 years’ worth of hindsight brings, it’s difficult to find another artist who released such a steady stream of innovative, artistically challenging and ultimately classic albums as Van Morrison did in the late ’60s/early ’70s. Just the trifecta of 1968’s Astral Weeks, followed by Moondance and His Band and the Street Choir (both in 1970!) would guarantee him a place in any serious list of music’s most influential acts. Add his next four studio sets (Tupelo Honey, Saint Dominic’s Preview, Hard Nose the Highway and Veedon Fleece) and you have as mind blowing and consistently inventive a body of work as any solo musician short of Stevie Wonder or Paul Simon. That run ended in 1974 but, as we now know, Morrison was just getting started.

It has taken too long but Warner Brothers, who owns the U.S. rights to the three earliest classics, finally got around to remastering and expanding them; first with Moondance in 2013, now Astral Weeks and … Street Choir. While neither benefit from the impressive vault excavation work done on Moondance (the super deluxe version of that ran 5 discs), these overdue reissues that include a smattering of bonus tracks and enhanced booklets, at least bring them up to date with substantially improved sonics, excellent historical liner notes and appropriately classy presentation.

Despite its 1968 recording, nothing sounds quite like Astral Weeks; not then, not now. Morrison’s chamber jazz/folk/singer-songwriter masterpiece exists in a timeless space that still makes it seem fresh and groundbreaking. From the opening title track, bassist Richard Davis’ rubbery stand-up lines flutter and ground Morrison’s poetic lyrics with their near free-form delivery. The result is riveting, even on its longest, most winding and dreamy tunes. It remains unique in Morrison’s bulging, diverse 50 year catalog and still inspires with its sheer audacity. Not surprisingly, the album never charted at the time. Perhaps that imbues a sense of finding something special that only a cult following are clued into. Songs such as “Sweet Thing,” “Cyprus Avenue,” and “The Way Young Lovers Do” (the latter two made the cut on Legacy’s recent double Morrison career spanning package), hit the spot between Morrison’s sprawling, often inscrutable lyrics — he claims many were channeled and it sounds it — and music that both falls between and combines genres with grace and beauty. 

Arriving after his hit Moondance put him on the map, Morrison was rushed to release His Band and the Street Choir for 1970’s Christmas shopping season. He tapped into some older, stockpiled compositions and wrote a few new ones. But despite its somewhat forced germination and pieced together track list, nothing sounds hurried or incomplete on Morrison’s most soulful offering to date. The peppy “Domino” was the lead off gem (and charting single), but the singer soon settles into the folksy/soul/R&B of “Crazy Face” (with an all too rare Morrison tenor sax solo), the sweet falsetto of the Curtis Mayfield inspired “Gypsy Queen” and the floating melody of the sensual “I’ll Be Your Lover Too.” He goes gospel on the lovely, churchy “If I Ever Needed Someone” and adds horns for the upbeat “Call Me Up in Dreamland.” It’s a logical extension, but far from a carbon copy, of Moondance and showed Morrison was pushing his boundaries even over the course of a year. 

Both discs add worthy if not essential alternate takes that will rope in existing fans. But they won’t need the extra material to do that since the long awaited upgraded remastering of these absolutely essential albums is enough to entice them, and hopefully everyone else, to experience this music in its most organic and vibrant form ever.