Title: Astral Weeks
Artist: Van Morrison
Year: 1968
Genre: Folk-rock, progressive folk, folk-jazz, blue-eyed soul
Challenge set by: Rubber Soul
Before anyone gets on my case about the genres used here, take it up with Wiki. I know little enough of Van Morrison that I would have said folk/pop was his thing, but Wiki says otherwise. Not being in a position to contradict the internet oracle, I shall humbly bow to its superior knowledge, and tie its shoelaces together while it’s not looking.
I feel this may be an easy second win for me. I certainly have no time for “Van the Man”, as he’s called, but I do rate some of his songs, as I’ve mentioned, and while enduring a full album can’t be considered something I’d prefer to do if I had a choice, I don’t feel it will be the possible torture that listening to the album chosen by, say, Batty, is likely to be. I will be quite surprised if I can’t find three nuggets here, but perhaps I’m being overly confident. Let’s see how we do. This is Morrison’s second album, and unlike the first effort here this catapults me all the way back to the mid-twentieth century, to 1968, as the sixties prepared finally to die out for good and let some proper music be born. There I said it. I don’t like most music from the sixties. The lack of astonished gasps says it all. Let’s go then before Rubber Soul comes after me with a rubber baton. With an iron bar inside.
Well, typically for Morrison it’s made hard for me as I can’t just copy over the tracklisting from Wiki. There’s some ****ing table deal going on and it screws everything up. Have to hand write them in mutter grumble everyone pay soon take revenge… Right, let’s do this thing.
Astral Weeks
A typically acoustic opener with Morrison’s voice front and centre and the music definitely playing second fiddle (sorry). Interesting that he uses the lyric “on the bright side of the ocean”, which would resurface, slightly altered, in one of his big hits. Oh god damn it. Not flute. Anything but flute. Please no. God I hate flute. Have I mentioned before how I hate flute? I hate flute. Flutes should be rammed up … but anyway. Nothing good about this so far. Damn I hate his voice. Always seems to be drawling as if he’s angry about something or god knows what. Another Dylan. Yeah, yeah, sue me. Ah for ****’s sake! This is seven minutes long! Bastard.
Beside You
Ah, my friend the mandolin! This is already much better, with a sort of foreshadowing of his big hit (and one for Rod Stewart) “Have I Told You Lately?” Ah but they had to bring that poxy flute back in, didn’t they? God I really hate the way he shouts all/most of his songs. What’s wrong with being a little more circumspect huh? Typical ****ing Nordie. Must be all that marching and shouting about bloody papists they do.
Sweet Thing
Another boring acoustic song, if a little more uptempo. Not much good to say so far, I have to admit. Could be looking good for ya, my stretchy friend! Yeah that was pretty unremarkable.
Cyprus Avenue
The basic melody here is better than any of the previous tracks (would not be hard) and the piano or whatever riff is quite nice. Can I take that as my first nugget? I don’t think so: it is rather in the background and I can’t say it really influences the track that much. But here’s some violin which I do like, so let’s take that as our first nugget. One down, two to go. Sort of a country feel to this song, and while I wouldn’t call it my favourite, it is so far my least hated. Well not even hated: I don’t hate these tracks, I just shrug at them. They do nothing for me. His repeated vocal here is
tres annoying.
The Way Young Lovers Do
Sounds a bit lounge music when this starts, but at least there’s some life in it. The brass, which I usually don’t like, is pretty cool here. Another nugget. One left to go. If this were an instrumental album I might enjoy it a bit more, though probably not that much. It is pretty boring.
Madame George
You have to be kidding me! Almost ten goddamn minutes? And we’re back in slow boring fall asleep acoustic territory. Wake me when it’s over. Oh no wait: I have to find that elusive third nugget don’t I? Well it’s unlikely to be found here so wake me when - oh all right. I can’t promise to try to stay awake, but I will try to try. Despite the thrice-cursed flute, the violin kind of offsets it. Barely. Jesus! Why does he have to shout every damned vocal? And more repetition. Very annoying. Ten minutes of this might very well finish me, but I’ll be damned if I’ll go down two tracks from the end. Why the **** does this have to be this long? It’s mostly him singing “Say goodbye to Madame George” over and bloody over. Talk about overstretching a premise. Yes, I know: I hate him, and there is that.
Ballerina
Well that was just garden variety boring. Nothing more to say about it.
Slim Slow Slider
And so is this. With extra flute.
Okay then, I guess I must admit defeat. I could be pedantic and select a third thing just to enable me to win, but it wouldn’t be fair. I found it very very difficult to find anything at all I liked about this, and if I’m honest it wasn’t that I hated it as such, just that it bored me to tears. So it would be disingenuous of me to say yeah I found three things I liked about it: I really didn’t, and even the two I did find are so small and really insignificant within the album that I would say they don’t really count as nuggets at all. I did make it through to the end of the album, but it was a struggle.
So there you go, Rubber Soul. A loud rapper from New Orleans couldn’t defeat me, but a boring singer from Northern Ireland could. I doff my cap to you. Wait a minute: I don’t own a cap. I shall buy one, and then doff it to you. You have beaten me, sir. You may say with conviction
Score
Trollheart 0 - Rubber Soul 1
Trollheart 1 - The World 1