Tuesday 6 January 2009

Astral Weeks



I've been listening to a bunch of new stuff in the past fortnight. I'll try to post about more of the sweet nuggets soon, but for now I'll recommend you track down Astral Weeks, the classic album by Van Morrison. Many people dig it, and now so do it. Rolling Stone rate it. So does Lester Bangs.

Its a sprawling folk-psych, jazzy, free-wheeling trip, straight out 1968. Dig it. Unpopular at the time, it seems, and I guess I can hear/see why, but it makes so much sense in light of all the post-folk, pastoral, free-spirited, mystical, wanna-be psychedelic stuff we've been hearing over the last couple of years. Maybe I sound like a wanker. Do I? I don't know why I never got into it earlier though, maybe its one of those albums your parents had to own for you to discover. It makes sense now. I'm going to need to take more of it in. Its dense, weird, imperfect, magical.

Van apparently played the album in its entirety in November last year at the Hollywood Bowl. Woah! You can watch it on Youtube with an annoying full-screen watermark. Boo.

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