CD Reviews

Van Morrison

Keep It Simple | Lost Highway

By BRETT MILANO | March 11, 2008

3.0 Stars

You might call this the Van Morrison equivalent of Bob Dylan’s Modern Times, since both are low-key, blues-infused sets with suitably craggy vocals and no instrumental frills. On “How Can a Poor Boy,” Morrison even borrows Dylan’s recent trick of quoting and expanding on a familiar country-blues lyric. And as with the Dylan album, the emotional tone ranges from merely grumpy to profoundly world-weary. This is nothing new for Morrison, who began airing his gripes about the music industry on 1991’s Hymns to the Silence and has returned to that theme on every album since. There’s a heavier-than-usual dose of it here, and the mood doesn’t lift until the closing track: “Behind the Ritual” is the one semi-epic, and the one that harks back to the celebratory “Caravan” days. As the track ascends, he sings of “drinking that wine, making time, back in days gone by,” blurring the line between spiritual transcendence and just plain drunkenness. As recent Van Morrison albums go, there have been more diverse and more upbeat ones, even one with nastier rants. (Check 2003’s What’s Wrong With This Picture for all the above.) But the late-night mood and the closing lift make this a worthy addition to the catalogue.

Van Morrison | Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont Street, Boston | March 14 | 617.931.2000

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