 Van Morrison A Sense of Wonder kicks off with one of my (more confusingly) favorite childhood singles, "Tore Down a la Rimbaud." That one and Bob Dylan's "Jokerman" were right up there with Steve Miller's "Abracadabra" and Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon," so I suppose that offers some measure of insight into my development into a champion of songs that rock the brain as well as the booty. The song is among Van's more widely ignored great songs, yet as I recall it received a good deal of play on Music Video 50 (or MV50) in the days before MTV became all-powerful and there were still local music video shows on the smaller stations. The album, like most Van Morrison albums, is solid and likable, although it is marked by a bit of the early-mid 80s slickness that makes things like Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms sound "good but dated." Van is very much in his "mystic searching for spiritual redemption in rock and roll" mode, which isn't a bad thing, and furthermore, he doesn't sound so much like a bleating sheep on this one like on Astral Weeks. It's a ponderous album, regarded as one of Van's "punch the clock" type of albums, but it's still pretty good. He hadn't quite hit the stride of his late 80s renaissance (Avalon Sunset, Irish Heartbeat, Enlightenment) but he was working on the same ideas which would see fruition in that period. It's a nice precursor to those albums, although it bogs down a bit in parts ("Boffyflow and Spike" will never make anyone's list of favorite VM songs). Aside from "Rimbaud," the gems here are "Ancient of Days," "The Master's Eyes," "What Would I Do Without You," and a stand-out cover of Mose Allsion's "If You Only Knew," each of which invests an R&B style with a sense of spiritual longing. Classic Van. (Which is also the name of the museum tour I run in the automotive wing at the Swingin' 70s Preservation Hall). Two instrumentals, "Evening Meditation" and the aforementioned "Bofflyflow," are atmospheric filler that serve to make the album come across as less inspired than it actually is. Van should've given it another month and come up with a couple more great songs, so those songs wouldn't leave you with such a "sense of wonder" about why he included two instrumentals that are essentially b-side quality. Artists! They never know how to make art– but fortunately, critics do, with such insightful hindsight. "Let the Slave" tries to incorporate William Blake, but it's a fairly heavy-handed, mainly spoken word excursion that makes later songs like "Coney Island" seem all the more wonderful. Far too much sax throughout, too, although for the most part the music is not objectionable. I don't buy into the idea of Van Morrison as one of rock's best singers, and in fact most of the time he sounds worse than the guy from "The Commitments," but Van is one of rock music's true originals, and I respect that a lot. It's cool that he's spent so much time passionately searching for something transcendent and religious within rock and roll, although I suppose it's telling that he hasn't found it in 30 years. If I don't find my keys within five minutes, I just quit my job, you know?
Review by Porpoisehead |