CD Review: Van Morrison’s Keep It Simple

Van’s enigmatic past has made him one of music’s most unusual and ever-changing artists. From his early days in front of the Irish rock group Them, which produced the much-covered hit “Gloria,” to his category-defying release Astral Weeks, Morrison’s path has never followed the trends of the crowd, preferring to take him wherever his own whims have lead.

This insistent self-direction continues with Keep It Simple, which remains sparse, spiritual and vaguely elderly in the age of artists clamoring over each other to hold youth’s fickle interest. Part blues, part folk, part soul, it relaxes in each genre it enters, holding its own pace and refusing to push hard enough to belie its intentions. Van doesn’t care about your wailing solos and affectation-saturated singing; he’s created exactly what he wanted to create, and his sincerity and self-assuredness give his recording the substance most modern soul records painfully lack.

The album’s rustic flavor pours forth from the first, languid notes of “How Can A Poor Boy?” – the guitar and harmonica dangle on their notes like a pair of dragonflies that won’t move, over a rhythm section that paces up and down like an old dog. By the time Van’s deep, bluesman’s voice utters the first words, the aroma of a hot, dust-filled Tennessee afternoon is present and pungent.

The song’s theme serves as an intro to the rest of the album: “How can a poor boy deliver this message to you? / How can a poor boy? You don’t believe anything that’s true.” The words are the wisdom of a veteran who’s risen to and fallen from fame, graduated from the school of hard knocks and given up nightclubs; and after finding the spiritual behind the ritual, he’s decided simple is better. Why doesn’t the rest of the world agree?

The instrumentation is a study in minimalism, with only a handful of spikes above the music’s calm, contented hum. Guitar and organ solos only hover slightly above the surface, refusing to take the spotlight from Van’s voice and the lyrical pictures he paints. The strongest pieces of melody come from hidden treasures such as the low guitar punctuating the chorus of “Lover Come Back,” or the intricately meandering rhythm guitar of the title track, creating two of the album’s stand-out songs. Others, such as the banjo-tinkering “Song Of Home,” create more of a lyrical sense of longing than a musical impression, though the bucolic countryside flavor is no less present.

Occasional gospel-style backup vocals complete the narrative of an old Irishman who still very strongly possesses the music, if not the need to shove it around a lot. Van has adequately demonstrated he is not slowing down in anything but tempo, and if he’s content to idle there, I’m content to hear it.


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