Van Morrison, “Astral Weeks”

Tom Heerman:

Van Morrison creates the hell out of himself on Astral Weeks. I like how self-confidently he sings and moans, as he recalls days of youth, and perverts about a 14-year-old girl. It’s not exactly improvised, but it has a spontaneous vibe. It’s definitely a cohesive piece, where songs are more like movements of the composition separated by 3 seconds. They all offer a lilting, avant garde, hip, drug party feel.

The bass dominates the record, and I love that about it. I think a clear, tuneful bass line can raise almost any song up to competence. And I think that is about what has happened on Astral Weeks. I think it’s best heard on headphones, because otherwise you lose interest pretty quickly.

It does not do a great job as background music because Van’s voice is kind of grating when the melodies are not top notch. I am sure he was just “letting it come out,” and I respect that, but let’s face it, his voice is not a beautiful instrument. If you have it on headphones, and really focus in on the groove and the beat, the vocal has a trippy/drunky calming effect. So it’s a decent novelty to pop on once in a while.

I am not a big fan of this record, though. I have never understood how it sneaks into consensus top 20 lists because it’s not tuneful, not memorable, and not rocking. Honestly, there is way too much good music in the world to spend your listening hours on Astral Weeks. Let’s get this off the list, people.

Grade 27. Bam!

Chris McJaggerly:

Astral Weeks is like a Mumford & Sons album in slow motion. Strumming guitar building to a climax, vocals choked with emotion, but not much structure or melody. While I’m not a massive Mumford fan, I think it works better when the tempo is fast than when it’s slow. Sorry, Van.

I guess it’s kinda cool that Van recorded this non-commercial record on the heels of the massive success of the “Brown-Eyed Girl” single (did you know it was originally titled “Brown-Skinned Girl”?). But shucking commercialism in favor of artiness isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Music is, after all, supposed to be pleasurable sound. And Astral Weeks just isn’t that pleasurable. It’s kinda boring. By the way, the best song is “The Way Young Lovers Do,” which features a horn arrangement somewhat similar to Chicago (the band, not the city) and Blood Sweat and Tears. It’s the least Astral Weeks song on Astral Weeks.

Although, looking at his whole career, it’s fair to consider Van Morrison a rock artist, Astral Weeks is not really a rock record. Which leads me to ask – are all types of music eligible for our Top 100?

The Rolling Stone list sends mixed signals on this point. Take jazz. RS doesn’t completely exclude it, but they only give it token representation, which clearly (in my view) shows ignorance of non-rock music. Jazz is represented by two Miles Davis records (Kind of Blue and Bitches Brew) and one John Coltrane (A Love Supreme). Even if it’s fair to exclude artists whose best work was in the pre-“album as we know it” period (like Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman), Miles and Coltrane are clearly not the only jazz artists who deserve to make a top 100 list. Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, and Herbie Hancock, to name just a few, are left out.

I mean, how’s it possible to keep Brubeck’s “Time Out” off of any best albums list, unless it’s supposed to be a rock-only list? And how can the RS list exclude Frank Sinatra? It doesn’t even matter what category you put him in (jazz singer? pop singer?), Sinatra clearly recorded some of the great albums of all time – such as Songs for Swingin’ Lovers.

I could write a similar diatribe about country music, but I digress. I give Astral Weeks 27.

Tom Heerman:

Good stuff, Chris. Our list will be whatever it will be. If you nominate a jazz record, and we grade it high, it will rise to the top. I am not thinking of any jazz records I would rate that high (just going off memory), but we shall see when the time comes to review one.

I think when you remove the lyrics and vocals, a record is diminished, and most jazz is instrumental, so it’s going to have a strike against it. The exception is vocal jazz, which often could be defined as just cool rock music or lite rock music.

One of my favorites is Mose Allison, who is always included with the jazz/blues genre. I could call his music cool rock, too. Either way, his songs are jazzy, and his singing is very stylized, and his lyrics are sometimes really clever. And he writes.

Which leads to another point that bears mentioning on the jazz topic; there is an incredible amount of covering the same songs in the jazz genre. You can look at many a classic record by any superstar jazz player, and see maybe one song that was written by the artist. Miles Davis is an exception to that. On Bitches Brew and Kind of Blue, he wrote and led the ensemble. So that is a reason his records might rise up on the list (if you care about that fact). Sir Duke Ellington wrote, obviously, and Herbie Hancock did also. I don’t think Brubeck wrote much, nor Frank, Ella, The Bird, etc. Interpretation is a form of creativity, but I think it’s less respected by Rolling Stone (and myself).

Chris McJaggerly:

I might end up being the jazz advocate. I do think improvising is a high form of art. In a sense, every jazz performance is “written” by the artist, right on the spot.

But my point wasn’t so much to advocate for jazz. That was just an example of a musical style that was marginalized by RS. Don’t you think there are at least a dozen country albums that deserve serious consideration? RS has nothing by Buck Owens, George Jones, Patsy Cline, Waylon Jennings, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, or Dwight Yoakam. Yet there is one record each by Captain Beefheart and Love. That ain’t right.

Tom Heerman:

The Buck (Owens) Starts Heer!

Conor Johnzon:

This album introduced me to Van: The Artist. I knew a few hits, but had never given him a chance. I started noticing this album on best-of lists and was intrigued given that Van wasn’t someone I ever considered a best-of anything. It was jarring and confusing in the best way possible the first few listens — I had no idea Van was capable of something like this.

The album is so avant garde and slurred and weird. Especially coming off of Van’s pop success in the mid-60s with “Gloria” and “Brown-eyed Girl” (I didn’t know it was originally “Brown-skinned Girl”, that’s CRAZY interesting to me). I think with his pop-success in mind and the fact that this album is so purposefully ‘out there’ that you could consider “Astral Weeks” as Van’s “Metal Machine Music”. Granted it doesn’t take as many risks as Lou Reed’s album and it does retain some of the pop qualities of the day and of Van’s previous output. However, I think the album was Van’s way to position himself as an Artist (with a capital A) and not a pop-star; much in the same way that “Metal Machine Music” was Lou’s way of saying “hey, fuck you, I’m not a pop-star” after “Transformer” and “Berlin” had entered him into the pop-lexicon in a way that he hadn’t been before.

Crazy theories aside, I dig “Astral Weeks”. I think it’s a worthy album for a top-100, though probably not on my personal list. It’s a huge spring-time album for me, and I listen to it a couple times a year as a result. Definitely not my favorite Van album but the title track and “Sweet Thing” and “The Way Young Lovers Do” occasionally make their way into road trip playlists. I think they stand alone as good songs. The rest of the album needs to be heard in succession though.

Grade: 28