VAN MORRISON : NEW ARRANGEMENTS AND DUETS

 

  1. Ain't Gonna Moan No More (with Kurt Elling)
  2. Broken Record (with Kurt Elling)
  3. Avalon Of The Heart
  4. Close Enough For Jazz (with Curtis Stigers)
  5. I'll Be Your Lover Too
  6. Only A Dream
  7. So Quiet In Here
  8. Someone Like You (with Joss Stone)
  9. The Beauty Of The Days Gone By
  10. The Master's Eyes
  11. So Complicated
  12. Choppin' Wood
  13. You Gotta Make It Through The World
  14. What's Wrong With This Picture(with Willie Nelson)
  15. Steal My Heart Away (with Willie Nelson)

Label : Virgin / Exile

Release Date : September 27, 2024

Length : 70:53

Review (Independent) : There is no musician alive quite like Van Morrison. The 79-year-old is almost a folkloric figure at this point, a curmudgeon of such bizarre and specific idiosyncrasies that nearly everyone in music seems to have their own Van Morrison story to share. His mercurial, often dysfunctional behaviour has birthed a million whispered anecdotes – some funny, some baffling, some surely apocryphal. (I remember a radio call-in segment years ago in which someone claimed that Morrison had been sat reading the paper at the venue where they were celebrating their nuptials; refusing to budge, the singer is supposedly pictured scowling in the background of their wedding photos.) And yet, Morrison’s music, a joyous, expansive offshoot of Rhythm and Blues, is nothing short of transcendent. One minute he’d be terrorising his bandmates with an impossible perfectionism, the next he’d be singing about the beauty of “days like this” with a voice that seemed to channel some ancient magic. At least, this used to be the case. The Irish singer’s latest album New Arrangements and Duets – his 46th studio LP, out this week – is a reminder of what late-era Van Morrison means. A musically proficient but plodding elevator-ready mix of duets, throwback covers and re-recorded originals, it falls desperately short of his earlier brilliance. It’s by no yardstick the worst record in Morrison’s back catalogue: that dishonour may well go to Morrison’s dismal post-pandemic albums, which featured original protest songs such as “They Own the Media” and “Fodder for the Masses”. Or perhaps to the 30-odd nonsense songs he recorded to petulantly fulfil an unwanted record contract, available now on Spotify under the title The Infamous Contractual Obligation Recordings Of ‘67. (Whatever you’re imagining – it’s somehow weirder than that.) In any case, New Arrangements and Duets is no fresh nadir for Morrison. But it is a continuation of a decades-long decline: the lapsing of a career from something vital and captivating to something staid and ultimately dispensable. Whether he would admit it or not, Morrison’s latest album reads like an attempt to shrug off the stigma of the last few years. During Covid, his public image took a battering; his dogmatic anti-establishment and anti-lockdown outbursts (which did not, he insisted, equate to anti-vaxxerism) seeped into his songwriting and his stage performances. He was never “cancelled” in any meaningful way – Morrison continued to perform in big venues, with typically sky-high ticket prices – but the backlash risked tipping his reputation from legendarily grumpy to outright toxic. By contrast, New Arrangements and Duets is tame and apolitical, and – significantly – was recorded before the pandemic. Old big band covers are never going to bring Morrison back into music’s mainstream, but among his loyalists, this album might well deflate some of the lingering discomfort over his radical pandemic re-brand.

Review (Cult Following) : You can play all the cool saxophone you like; New Arrangements and Duets is still a wasteful project. Nothing says the artistic tank is running on empty than three cover collections in two years. One of those, this package of Van Morrison classics and rarities, goes the route of U2 on Songs of Surrender. Vague revitalisations of works which all sound better on their flagship album, a few with additional instrumentation from fellow legends of other genres. Willie Nelson and Kurt Elling can be heard throughout this, the latter on opening duo Ain’t Gonna Moan No More and Broken Record. Ironic choices considering the complaints Morrison has put in, time and again, in recent years. It has distracted him from doing anything of artistic interest and so we are saddled with fifteen do-overs of songs already fine enough to last on without a turn into jazz fundamentals. Smooth as a few of these numbers may sound the very choice to redo songs without issue shows a lack of confidence in freshly written material. Instead, Morrison picks from the likes of The Prophet Speaks and Down the Road and gives his already heartfelt, if a little choppy sets of music, overdubs of studio shouting and often uninteresting jazz pieces. It takes some incredible skill to make Elling sound dull. But here we are, a series of songs which do not benefit from this blues-like playing because the instrumental sections sound strained and copied. Dull work, dishwater-like flavours of jazz swing of a generic variety. You would hear these tones in budget menu screens for mid-2000s movies, light cartoon shows made for kids hold better arrangements than a few of the songs featured on New Arrangements and Duets. Broken Record is not as smart as Morrison thinks it is. Even moments like Avalon of the Heart, where Morrison kicks it up an emotive gear, sound hollow. It is the very generic run of jazz instrumentals within, obviously influenced by surface-level listening and unmoved by the modern swing. Morrison, like Bob Dylan or Neil Young, is dependent on the influences of his youth. But where the latter musicians are capable of turning those charmed songs of their youth into moments of immense and forthright charm, Morrison is stuck playing to a diminished crowd who dare not experience anything new. Morrison is keen to depend on his voice, a marked improvement over Accentuate the Positive and Moving on Skiffle, though not by much. There is something so tremendously empty about covering works already out there, already filled with heart. Recapturing this because there is nothing left to give is a miserable experience, no matter the intent. New Arrangements and Duets is as it says. A series of no musical choices and additional voices from unexplainable collaborations. Little, if any, are worth plucking from this messy collection of vague jazz-like numbers. At its best, the songs are vaguely palatable. Easily forgotten but never to be returned to, like a cheap wine at a restaurant with two options. The other option is silence – which at points throughout this album, would be preferable. Too many of the tracks hold a similar jazz beat to them, meaning Morrison is left with little to do in these instrumental sections. A lack of variation and a consistent return to the well of interesting lyrical ideas from two decades ago is a nasty pairing, a bitter experience which feels unremarkable in its best spots, of which there are few.

Review (AllMusic) : Van Morrison’s "New Arrangements and Duets" presents a fantastic blend of his unmistakable vocal mastery and richly developed jazz arrangements. Chris White’s reimagining of Van’s older folk-oriented tracks—like "The Master's Eyes" and "So Quiet in Here"—is beautiful. Paul Moran captures a dynamic, live energy on tracks such as "So Complicated" and "Choppin' Wood". The lush arrangements allow Van's unique vocal mastery to shine, creating a fresh experience out of familiar material. The consistency of his band, fine-tuned over the decades, ensures a tight and soulful performance throughout. The duets featuring Kurt Elling, Curtis Stigers, Joss Stone, and Willie Nelson are captivating. Willie Nelson’s voice, like Van’s, remains incredible in his older age. Despite being recorded at different times, the album feels cohesive throughout. His previous album Instrumentals from much older recordings doesn't have the quality of musicians of this album or the coherency of tracklist. While I’d love to hear new studio or live material, if re-releases of old recordings continue to reach this level of quality, we’re in for many more treasures. This is a great addition to one's collection.

Review (The Arts Desk) : It begins with a superb rendering of his 2018 song “Ain’t Gonna Moan No More”, on which Van is joined by the mellifluous voice of Kurt Elling, and which was recorded alongside the other duets on the album in 2018 and 2019. It then winds through a mix of duets recorded in 2014 (alas, no Sir Cliff) and what they're calling "big band" arrangements of catalogue classics like “Avalon of the Heart”, “So Quiet in Here” and “The Master’s Eyes”, a gem from 1985’s A Sense of Wonder. This extremely likeable scoop of slightly random songs is the second of a series of releases from the vaults on Orangefield Records (the first, Beyond Words: Instrumental compiled instrumental cuts from the Seventies to the 2000s). While there are a handful of deluxe editions from Van Morrison's catalogue – Moondance, Astral Weeks, 1997’s The Healing Game – it transpires there’s a motherlode of archive sitting there waiting to be brought blinking into the light, and it all appears to be personally curated for the singer’s own archive label. And it's a great listen. The big band arrangements are held tight by Paul Moran and Chris White, who chose the tracks they wanted to work on, and they're not that "big" but they are adapt at hitting the sweet spot of a familiar song to bring out a different shine. The album’s longest cut, “So Quiet in Here” is one of the best. Of the duets, which include Curtis Stigers getting “Close Enough for Jazz” and Joss Stone getting worked up on “Someone Like You”, it’s the two that close the set that take the crown, “What’s Wrong with This Picture’ and “Steal My Heart Away” with Willie Nelson and his son Lukas on guitar. They’re are a pairing made in heaven, and “What’s Wrong” is a hell of a track, and you have to hope more of this manna descends upon us down here on earth.