My close high school friend and musical guru, Josh, is responsible for introducing me to this incendiary album. Van Morison’s Moondance (the slow burn of ‘Into the Mystic’), Tupelo Honey and Greatest Hits held coveted slots in my CD collection at the time, but I had not yet purchased Astral Weeks maybe the psychedelic jacket image threw me or perhaps my nascent, collecting self wasn’t ready for an album without any discernable hits. Thankfully, Josh had the endearing habit of saving great, obscure albums from used bins at thrift stores. When he picked up an extra Astral Weeks, he claimed he only wanted Van to be in the hands of a true music enthusiast.
Senior year in high school, he entrusted his latest refugee to my care. And Astral Weeks has not left my rotation for more than a week since.
Morrison cut Weeks in about two days in New York City, and released the work a true work of art in 1968. But the hits didn’t flow, and critical response was hesitant at best. Even the progressive ’60s music scene was not ready for Morrison’s shift from the pop throwaway sound of ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ to the improvisational, yearning notes of Weeks. (Morrison has since encoded this shift into his very music mantra: he plays for himself, indulging his musical and lyrical whims. If you don’t like it, tough).
Yet and are not things nicer in retrospect? the album has endured, achieving due praise as one of the most influential albums, well, ever.
Astral Weeks is so achingly poignant because it does not exist in the world of structured songs. Morrison runs with his lyrics, crying and calling, sighing and repeating, repeating. Astral Weeks tells the tale of a new relationship, forming then fleeing.
Morrison questions his feelings of lust in the title track ‘Would you find me? / Would you kiss-a my eyes?’ and then details the sweetness of the first touch and the first kisses in the sexy ‘Beside You’ and saccharine ‘Sweet Thing.’ ‘Cypress Avenue’ leads you down the meandering paths of lovers still enthralled with each other, completely unaware of the world around them.
The album’s climax (pun intended) is the suggestive ‘The Way Young Lovers Do.’ As the only fast-tempo song on the record (thereby disqualifying it as a bedtime album), it races and pounds like a heartbeat. ‘Ballerina’ is spent love slowly tiptoeing away. The album’s swansong, ‘Slim Slow Slider,’ longs for a love lost, wondering what could have been until the frustrated end ‘Everytime I see you / I just don’t know what to do’ as unexpected pounding drums swell.
Every listen to ‘Astral Weeks’ is truly a journey but not hard to follow, because we’ve all been there before.
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