Morrison’s voice is one of pop’s most recognizable instruments, and it still sounds like a siren call. DeFrancesco is back, as is his guitarist Dan Wilson, and Morrison adds harmonica to a few tracks, including a strutting take on the John Lee Hooker side “Dimples” (1956) and a gently raucous version of Solomon Burke’s smash “Gotta Get You Off My Mind” (1965). It’s nominally a blues record, although Morrison’s a generous enough musical thinker to expand the genre so that other ideas are allowed in. On The Prophet Speaks, Morrison’s fourth album of his recent run and 40th album overall, the focus shifts a bit. Versatile, which came out a year ago, is a love letter to pop standards in a jazz-combo package, with stripped-down, smoky-lounge versions of “Unchained Melody,” “A Foggy Day” and “Makin’ Whoopee.” And You’re Driving Me Crazy, released in April, continues Morrison’s jazz sojourn, with organist-trumpeter Joey DeFrancesco, who’s collaborated with jazz titans like Miles Davis, getting second billing and adding his sideman expertise to standards and originals–like a stretched-out version of the Astral Weeks shuffle “The Way Young Lovers Do” that spotlights Morrison’s scatting. In September 2017’s Roll With the Punches, Morrison muscles through R&B classics like Sam Cooke’s “Bring It on Home to Me” and Ruth Brown’s “Teardrops From My Eyes” alongside a few Morrison originals. Over the past 15 months, he’s released a string of albums that pay tribute to his own artistic roots the newest, just released, is titled The Prophet Speaks. Instead, Morrison has continued to create even while he flicks at the past. But Morrison has been there and done that: Astral Weeks got the deluxe-reissue treatment in 2015, and he reworked the record at the Hollywood Bowl for the album’s 40th anniversary in 2008. Many artists would use a milestone like this to embark on a victory lap: add some bonus tracks or some remastering polish to the already existing work, then head out on a tour featuring re-creations of the studio tracks.
The golden anniversary of Morrison’s second album has been celebrated far and wide all year: retrospective appreciations have bloomed, and the delightful recent book Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968, by Ryan Walsh, connects the dots between that critically beloved release and the time Morrison spent in Boston a half-century ago. This November, Van Morrison celebrated the half-centennial of his album Astral Weeks, on which the Irish troubadour added his rousing high baritone to a watercolor landscape awash with genres so thoroughly blended it nearly rendered the idea of categorizing music obsolete.
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