It would be very, very easy to go overboard when discussing Van Morrison’s new album, Remembering Now. The 79-year-old Northern Irishman’s latest release, his first album of original songs since the berserkly terrible anti-lockdown polemic What’s It Gonna Take? (2022) has been hailed as his best in decades. It’s not such an absurd claim – if we don’t count 2016’s from-the-archives live album ..It’s Too Late To Stop Now: Volumes II, III, IV & DVD, or his underrated country venture Pay the Devil (2006) – but that’s more a testament to just how awry Morrison’s output has gone.
Morrison, one of music’s true originals and a genuine great, has, in recent years, managed to remain as preternaturally prolific as he always was (Remembering Now is his 47th studio album), while becoming, at the same time, preternaturally crap. Even if we set aside his brief and scandalising detour into Covid contrarianism that yielded his lowest lows, his output for decades has been lacking: limp, atavistic cover albums, or similarly insipid original records. (As a live act, he’s a bit of a different story, never losing his capacity for sheer magnetic brilliance, albeit now in flashes that come and go like the weather.)
