Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart

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. The word conjures up an appalling set of associations: brutality in education, reactionary meddling in politics, crass ignorance in sexuality – a cold authoritarian regime which wielded, and still wields, an oppressive influence on Irish society.

Throw in the bigotry and sectarianism which runs like a cancerous growth through the Northern part of this benighted country and you have a perfect recipe for revulsion. It’s against that backdrop that the oncoming reign of materialism seems to many like a kind of liberation. The horrible and inescapable irony is that our so-called spiritual leaders must bear a large part of the responsibility for killing our spirituality. Offer people something mean, joyless and restrictive in the name of soul, and – exposed to it at an early enough age – they’re all the more susceptible to the lure of commerce. A dimension is being forgotten, neglected. It is that dimension out of which great art is forged. It is that dimension through which ecstasy is attained. It is the realm of imagination. Of intuition, Of the ineluctable, Of the irrational. it is not life-denying but at its fullest and most profound, quite the opposite. It does not conflict with sexuality, but can both fed off and feed it. It does not deny radical politics but walks hand in hand with it, at its most visionary.

It is that dimension which Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart celebrates. On the surface, it could be described as a religious album but it is much more than that barren phrase implies. It is in many ways a culmination of Van Morrison’s search for the simplest and purest form of truth – of his belief, above all, in doing it. On much of Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart, Van Morrison has pared his language back to nothing in the hope of, even just once, expressing that everything, that wholeness, that oneness which, at the end of it all, both defies meaning and fulfils it.

Beneath its beautifully etched surface is an oceanic depth. Even at its most controlled, the music on Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart is underscored by a fathomless intensity. Van Morrison has long since transcended the need to protest his depth of feeling; now he can afford to unfold his mysteries at a pace which both reflects and celebrates a sense of space and time, of continuity, of the part the smallest detail plays in the magnificent scheme of things. It is that life-affirming belief that informs the spirituality of Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart.

The title track comes in two parts. An instrumental opens side two, its Eastern shading reminiscent of ‘Scandinavia’. The voices of female backing vocalists Biana Thomton, Pauline Lozano and Annie Stocking create an almost atonal effect, eerily playing around with major 7ths and 9ths, never quite hitting and holding down the root when the backing chords establish it. It’s a strangely ethereal piece, highlighted by Morrison’s piano, Mark Isham’s synth (especially notable for one beautiful segue out of the women’s voices) and a passionately modulated bass part by David Hayes, whose work is of crucial importance throughout the album.

Part two, the penultimate track, positively bristles with authenticity: by way of thematic continuity Morrison and his female lead begin by singing the title refrain aharmonically, before Van takes the space to repeat the simplest message with unassailable conviction "I’m a soul in wonder" (four times) "I’m just wild about it, I just can’t live without it, inarticulate speech, inarticulate speech, inarticulate speech of the heart".

There are three other instrumentals: ‘Connswater’,an almost jaunty march infiltrated by a sense of foreboding and impending conflict; ‘Celtic Swing’ a swelling piece built around a magnificently insidious guitar riff, its light effervescent persistence carrying the atmospheric explorations above, on a gentle rush of wavelike sparkle; and ‘September’, a tone poem of muted shades and liquid cymbal washes with sax to the fore, extraordinary svelte in its finish, until Van’s voice struggles into the picture, sounding like nothing more or less than the first inarticulate gropings of a child in search of a word. Crucial to the album’s search for the essence of communication, its an audacious gesture that paradoxically takes the music beyond language, penetrating the realm of the subconscious: by saying less more is revealed in the realm of feeling, or to put it simply, it works, ricocheting shivers up and down the spine.

But for audacity it’d be hard to outdo ‘Rave On John Donne’. In the vein of ‘Summertime In England’ its Morrison’s tribute to not only Donne himself but to other visionaries of the printed page: ‘Rave on John Donne’ he recites over a languid backdrop "Rave on the holy fool, down through the weeks of ages in the moss pond dark dank pools, Rave on down through the industrial revolution, empiricism, the Atomic and Nuclear age, Rave on down through time and space, down through the corridors, Rave on words or printed page, Rave on you left us infinity in well pressed pages/Drive on with wild abandon uptempo frenzied haze." Becoming more impassioned he namechecks Walt Whitman ("Move down in wet grass"), Omar Kayam and Kahlil Gibran before bringing it all back home "Rave on oh man of Ireland, Rave on Mr. Yeats, Rave on through the holy rosy cross, Rave on through theosophy and the Golden Dawn, rave on through the writing of a vision". He pours forth impassioned series of ejaculation "Rave on, Rave on, Rave on" before bursting into song "Rave on John Dunne, down through the weeks of ages…" and back through empiricism, the industrial revolution and infinity in well pressed pages. On paper they may seem like the most unmusical lyrics but in Morrison’s voice it is as if they were invented to be sung. All told, it’s a stunning tour-de-force, which exits on a gentle wave of quiet lyricism, a tender promise of future ecstasies.

Elsewhere on the album there are curious shadings reminiscent of Bob Dylan’s ‘Street Legal’, especially throughout the serenely healing textures of ‘River Of Time’.

‘Irish Heartbeat’ reveals again Van’s abiding sense of belonging within the Irish tradition. Over a Celtic melody, he sings of the value of community. "Don’t ever stray, stray so far from your own ones. ‘Cos the world is so cold, don’t care noting for your soul, that you share, with your own ones". Davy Spillane’s uileann pipes adding appropriate colour far back in the mix. The track ends with Morrison scatting magnificently in unison with the guitar, a sublime touch.

Linked themetically to ‘Irish Heartbeat’ are ‘Cry For Home’ (though this also carries the obvious celestial connotations) – as Neil McCormick accurately commented reviewing the single, that voices is everything: just wait for it to deliver; and ‘The Street Only Knew Your Name’ an affectionate recollection of those days in Belfast "long before fortune and fame" when "everyone knew who everyone was and they knew it because of the street", laced with warm accordion flavourings.

‘Higher Than The World’ is the album’s opening track and its final glory. Anyone with a taste for Al Green’s sweet soul will appreciate this positively delicious piece of upfulness. The feel is inspired, the vocals inspiring and the climax a finely controlled and orchestrated reverie.

No doubt familiarly will breed deeper insights; the album’s thematic continuity comes into sharper focus even as I write this. Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart is, without argument, another major work from a man who must rank among the most inspired and creative artists ever to have been associated with the ‘rock’ context.

That word is totally irrelevant now to Van Morrison. He’s out there at the limits of expression searching for the transcendent.

It is not too much to suggest that with Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart he has revealed that quest in a completely new light.

Long may he shine.