Moondance
The Hot Press Newsdesk, 19 Dec 2009
Van’s follow up to Astral Weeks, released in March 1970, couldn’t have provided greater contrast in terms of tone and sound. In was a loose, freewheeling, joyful, soul-inspired noise. The songs brimming with melody, the spread of sounds mesmerising – from the Band-like Hiberno-American folk of ‘And It Stoned Me’ and the dizzying ‘Into the Mystic’ to the jazz romance of the title tune, the soft blue-eyed soul of ‘Crazy Love’ and the vaulting vocal on ‘Caravan’ (which would damn near steal the show from Dylan at The Last Waltz). Here Morrison managed to mate pop savvy with substance and depth, and scored his first Top 30 album.
No 11 in 2009, as voted for by over 200 Irish musicians. Up from No 13 in 2004.
The Hot Press Newsdesk
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Latest Related Videos For This Artist
He releases a new studio effort on Blue Note Records in October.
2012-06-27 - News
East Belfast Arts Festival to host Van Morrison on September 8
2012-06-13 - News
The live music extravaganza will take place in Wales this August.
2012-06-07 - News
He'll be supported by his daughter Shana.
2011-11-03 - News
Van Morrison is directing a documentary that will focus on his live 2009 version of his 1968 album Astral Weeks.
2009-09-08 - News
He's to get his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
2009-07-06 - News
A recording of Van's recent Hollywood gig will be released on his own label early next month.
2009-01-07 - News
The reviews were all rave on Friday as Van Morrison performed Astral Weeks for the first time in its entirety at the 18,000-capacity Hollywood Bowl.
2008-11-10 - News
Van Morrison has announced back to back Hollywood Bowl shows on November 7 and 8 at which he’ll perform his classic Astral Weeks album in its entirety.
2008-10-03 - News
Van Morrison has spoken about his forthcoming album, his first new release in two years.
2008-01-16 - News
Foy Vance, Bap Kennedy, The Four Of Us, The Winding Stair and Tom McShane are among the artists set to re-interpret Van Morrisson's classic album Astral Weeks at a special event next month.
2007-12-07 - News
Van Morrison has led the tributes to veteran jazzman George Melly who succumbed last week to vascular dementia and lung cancer.
2007-07-12 - News
Irish living legend Van Morrison is to join UK living legends the Rolling Stones on their European tour.
2007-05-10 - News
The legendary Van Morrison is to release a new compilation album, featuring unreleased collaborations with the likes of Tom Jones.
2007-04-18 - News
Van Morrison fanatics – and there are plenty around – will want to grab hold of tickets for the June 9 show he’s playing at High Lodge, Thetford Forest nr. Brandon in Suffolk.
2007-03-21 - News
Van Morrison was the worthy recipient of a Tiffany & co-designed award to honour his musical contribution to film.
2007-02-26 - News
Van Morrison is Los Angeles bound on February 22 for a star-studded Hollywood shindig that’ll see him presented with the US-Ireland Alliance Award by Al Pacino.
2007-02-19 - News
Van Morrison is to be honoured with a prestigious accolade ahead of the Oscars next year.
2006-09-14 - News
Hotpress.com can exclusively reveal that Van Morrison has bought Dublin’s Windmill Lane Studios.
2006-08-11 - News
At last, the Belfast Cowboy lives up to his name by recording a straight-up country album.
2006-03-03 - REVIEW
Kenny Rogers and Van Morrison are the headline attractions at Midlands, a two-day country festival taking place on July 29 and 30 in Ballinlough Castle, County Meath.
2006-02-13 - News
As his 60th birthday approaches, Van Morrison remains a singular presence in music
2005-08-30 - Interview
In what they’re promising will be a regular ocurrence, the www.vanmorrison.com website is offering fans the chance to hear exclusive tracks.
2005-08-15 - News
Plagued by less than favourable unofficial biographers, Van Morrison is going to "dispel the myths" by writing an autobiography
2005-06-07 - News
It is one of the perverse facets of contemporary music that there is a constant demand that artists have to re-invent themselves. I’m all for it if it’s what a band or a performer either needs or wants to do, in order to give renewed sparkle to the muse. But it isn’t something that we ask of poets or writers. Would we want or expect John McGahern to produce a sci-fi thriller set in an imaginary bog landscape five hundred years into the future?
2005-05-05 - REVIEW
'Van Morrison: No Surrender' is billed as the ultimate chronicle of the life of the famous Ulsterman
2005-04-01 - News
Having parted ways with Blue Note Records, Van Morrison's next album will be released on Polydor in May
2005-03-15 - News
Van Morrison has been unveiled as the headliner of the 2005 Derry Jazz & Big Band Festival.
2004-12-17 - News
"Astral Weeks came out of this desire to break out of this rigidity, you know, to extend the lines, and chop it up and move beyond this 1,2,3,4, beats to the bar. "
2004-11-22 - Interview
Van Morrison will be honoured with BMI Icon staus at an awards ceremony in London next week
2004-09-29 - News
Van Morrison gets the, if you will, rockumentary treatment on January 21 courtesy of that other Belfast boy and former Hot Press scribe Stuart Bailie.
2004-01-09 - News
Van Morrison will be performing alongside Brian May and Mark Knopfler (among others), at the Lonnie Donegan tribute concert next June
2003-12-17 - News
The High Court has ordered Van Morrison to pay £40,000 in damages for breach of contract with an English publican
2003-11-11 - News
The High Court has ordered Van Morrison to pay £40,000 to an English publican after pulling out of a one-off gig in 2002
2003-11-11 - News
It’s the title of his new album, his first on the legendary jazz label, Blue Note. it’s also an apt introduction to an interview in which Van Morrison talks freely about his work, his background in Belfast, his brushes with the music industry – and about what made him what he is.
2003-10-28 - Interview
Van Morrison heads a stellar bill of songwriting talent for the first of several huge outdoor dates at Killyleagh Castle, Co Down
2003-02-24 - News
Irish legend accepts full apology and retraction two years after initial accusations
2003-01-16 - News
Dublin's Apollo Gallery stages an exhibition by artist William Mulhall, whose repertoire includes sketches of Bob Dylan and Van Morrison
2002-11-12 - News
Still making great music after all these years, Van Morrison is an Irish genius worthy of comparison with the most enduring ’60s legends such as Bob Dylan and Neil Young
2002-11-06 - Interview
What we find is an artist on top of his game, treating us to a thoroughly competent and engaging exposition of what he can do
2002-05-23 - REVIEW
A week after one famous rock grump departs these shores and another, homegrown one appears over the horizon..
2001-08-02 - REVIEW
Van Morrison and Linda Gail Lewis What next for Van Morrison? Already this year he's gone back to his skiffle roots with The Skiffle Sessions, hauling on board for that project the great Lonnie Donegan. And now Van-the-man returns to a time when he was Van-the-boy, digging the kind of pure country music made by Hank Williams and the frenetic rock 'n' roll sounds fashioned by Jerry Lee Lewis.
2000-09-14 - REVIEW
You look up 'skiffle' in the Chambers 20th Century Dictionary and it says "a strongly accented jazz type of folk music, played by guitar, drums and often unconventional instruments etc. popular about 1957".
2000-01-20 - REVIEW
There's this idea abroad that Van Morrison has been working the same groove too often over the past few years. The purpose of this paragraph is simply to state that this is a misapprehension.
1999-03-17 - REVIEW
Hymns To The Silence, seeking higher planes, sometimes soars, occasionally strikes a flat note, but always repairs its errors with an offering pitch-perfect and ravishingly beautiful to the ear.
1991-10-03 - REVIEW
No disco, no party, no foolin’ around – here we find Van Morrison by turns enraptured and embittered, on an album that is never less than engrossing and which is occasionally sublime.
1986-04-24 - REVIEW
It is because we’ve been force fed dogma all our lives that there is such a reaction against organised religion among young people in Ireland.
1983-03-18 - REVIEW
"Hey Jimmy, I want to go home! Hey Jimmy, I been away too long…" And you feel like shouting yeah to the way he sings it, to the way the voice reaches into your soul like only the most expressive instrument can, like Muddy Waters' slide, or Charlie Parker's sax, or Mavis Staples' voice… but you know what he's talking about as well.
1982-02-19 - REVIEW
The over of Van Morrison's new LP immediately brings to mind a controversial poem of William Wordsworth's called the Leech Gatherer, later retitled 'Resolution and Independence'.
1980-09-27 - REVIEW
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