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Album Review
by Emma Marx-Isherwood
21-10-2003
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| Van 'The Man' Morrison's latest epic CD |
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Van Morrison: 'What’s Wrong With This Picture?'
(Blue Note)
Van 'The Man': the unique talent’s masterclass
No one sings like Van Morrison; there is no artist like Van ‘The Man’.
On ‘What’s Wrong With This Picture?’, Van Morrison’s debut release on Blue Note Records, the legendary vocalist and songwriter draws on the musical touchstones that have inspired him throughout his career. On these thirteen songs, including eleven originals, Morrison bends his incomparable voice around the soul, blues, folk and jazz styles that have been the mainstay of his music for the past four decades.
Throughout the album, Morrison sings with the authority and freedom that comes from a lifetime of experience, his rich, distinctive vocals shaded with nuance and steeped in the simple joy of performing. Setting the stage for this collection is the title cut, which opens the album with Morrison musing on the changes time brings.
Invoking a smoky jazz club with swinging electric guitar lines and lush strings, he sings: “What’s wrong with this picture? / Doesn’t anybody see/ That’s who everyone thought/ That I used to be.” Indeed, with this album, as ever, Morrison continues his musical progression while integrating the past. Jazz guitar and Hammond organ lay a meditative groove on ‘Meaning of Loneliness’, an ode to solitude and Morrison’s philosopher-poet side, while a horn section and an island flavour underscore the upbeat love song ‘Once In a Blue Moon’.
On several tracks, Morrison's love of the blues is well represented, from the jump’n’jive of the original ‘Whinin’ Boy Moan’ – his clipped syncopation etching the swing into the song – to the hopped-up rockabilly of ‘Stop Drinking’, a jubilant blues-shouting showcase based on Lightnin’ Hopkins’s ‘You Better Watch Yourself’.
Slowing the tempo down for a couple of songs, Morrison examines the downside of fame. ‘Too Many Myths’ sets the scene with barroom piano and his own acoustic guitar, while ‘Goldfish Bowl’ starts with a tenor-trumpet-and Hammond organ groove then adds a little humour, with Morrison emphatically reasoning: “I don’t have no hit record/ I don’t have no TV show/ Tell me why should I have to live in this goldfish bowl?”
And with ‘Little Village’, a mellow blues, Morrison delivers another timeless composition, with poetic lines (“Raining in the forest/ Just enough to magnetize the leaves/ We’ll go walking baby with the moonlight shining down through the trees”) and a flute and mandolin accompaniment that lend a Celtic air, a sound long known as a Morrison trademark.
There are two things about Van, as we mentioned above. Pure class.
8/10
Emma Marx-Isherwood
21-10-2003
Van Morrison’s album ‘What’s Wrong With This Picture?’ is released 13 October 2003 by Blue Note
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