The result is an album made by a group of musicians searching together in sound, taking barely rehearsed songs and exploring possibilities within them. It's as if everyone involved were trying to take these simple chord structures and perceive them from every angle, turning chords and melodies inside out as if performing a kind of musical cubism. The song arrangements are simple, but within these sonic structures the musicians and Morrison's inimitable voice glide, growl and soar. As if, impossibly, I had a share in their creation.Īstral Weeks is an album that combines poetic lyrics, improvisation, and, as far as I'm concerned, great song writing. Within such lyrical worlds I can incorporate my own experiences, and the result is a feeling that these are, in a bizarre way, somehow partially my songs.
Being a writer and an avid reader (two things that nearly always seem to go together), I am drawn to lyrics of a poetic nature, favouring the ambiguous, the visionary, and the metaphoric realms. That being said, I am also fascinated with the craft of song writing, and find inspiration in the diversity of voices that can express themselves through the use of a few guitar chords and simple melodies. Not only is it the music I most love to create, it's also the music that excites me most, both in its live and recorded iterations. Music of an improvisational nature has always held my attention. My musical trajectory has taken me down disparate pathways, but all of these roads share a love for improvisation and openness. In a rare interview about recording the album, Morrison had this to say:īesides being a scholar of popular music, I am also a musician and a writer. Recorded in New York on September 25th, October 1st and 15th 1968, the album features Morrison backed by a series of A-list session musicians, many of whose primary genre was jazz. Van Morrison inhabits a unique corner of popular music, and Astral Weeks inhabits a unique corner of his discography. Amongst many others, Bruce Springsteen, Bono, Elvis Costello, Joni Mitchell, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Martin Scorsese have quoted from it, praised it or cited it as an inspiration. Of course, I am not alone in admiring this record. Astral Weeks, on the other hand, seems to move and change with me, offering a kind of musical companionship that I have found in few other recordings. Many other records I listened to then retain a nostalgic value, but they fail to move me, and, most importantly, most of them are no longer relevant for the version of myself I currently inhabit. I discovered Astral Weeks as a teenager growing up in Nanaimo, BC, and it remains one of the few albums from that personal era that can still move me to tears.
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