Hope's what they send you for a speedy recovery. Or it's what incumbent presidents warm up like leftovers just before election year. High and plural, it's what parents forever hold for children, and what's forever being confounded, disappointed or dashed. Low and singular, it's the guy next to Crosby in all those Road pictures.
first date for the dance. And if you're Van Morrison, she must be a brown-eyed girl. Name of Angeliou, according to
Into the Music, another wonderful record from Van the Man.
Robbie Robertson called him that in a moment of offhand inspiration when Morrison unexpectedly danced and kicked his way offstage during the Last Waltz performances in San Francisco. It suits, too—catches the quickness, the racy grace of the guy, the potency and surprise. Such an affectionate nickname might miss the darkness and the turbulence, but these days that only means it fits just right. On Into the Music, the storm passes. The turbulence here is "a full force gale" that stands as a metaphor for conversion and renewal. That's what this album is about, proudly and stunningly and with no apologies. Resurrection. Real hope.
Some of the boldness of Into the Music comes from the kind of realization, simple but crucial as a heartbeat, that Bruce Springsteen tries hard to hold on to, and puts so well: "It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive." The particular power of Van Morrison's new LP draws, I think, from certain reservoirs of contained pain, from a past full of turmoil that's turned around on itself and is now used to shade and underline the brightness so that this new light shines in sharper relief. Morrison's given hope a thematic legitimacy it hasn't had for quite some time. He's taken it away from the politicians and preachers, the greeting-card versifiers and quick-change hawkers of the higher consciousness. Into the Music is a record of splendid peace.
Songs like "Bright Side of the Road," which gets the album off to a joyous start, or "And the Healing Has Begun," a slow and sensual confessional, could easily curdle under other auspices, turn as sappy as a smile button. Still singing with all the resonances of "T.B. Sheets" and "Cyprus Avenue," still invoking the half-mystic, half-playful spirit of "Moondance" and "Glad Tidings," Morrison dances well away from that sort of swampy territory, where you can get sucked under by sentiment. Into the Music is as adept as last year's Wavelength, but more settled and specific, and all the better for it. Morrison's making music about a kind of spirituality that's not smothering but enhancing, that "lifts you up again" (like that full-force gale) instead of lulling you with pretty parables and buying you off with empty promises for the future.
There's much beauty on this LP, but very little that's simply pretty. Into the Music, a chronicle of growth,
