VAN MORRISON : REMEMBERING NOW

VAN MORRISON : REMEMBERING NOW

Down To Joy
If It Wasn’t For Ray
Haven’t Lost My Sense Of Wonder
Love, Lover and Beloved
Cutting Corners
Back To Writing Love Songs
The Only Love I Ever Need Is Yours
Once In A Lifetime Feelings
Stomping Ground
Memories And Visions
When The Rains Came
Colourblind
Remembering Now
Stretching Out

Label : Exile Productions

Release Date : June 13, 2025

Length : 68:09

Review (AllMusic) : Van Morrison worried many fans with 2022's What's It Gonna Take?, a COVID-era paranoid political rant. Fears eased somewhat with the two solid musically linked albums Moving On Skiffle and Accentuate the Positive in 2023, offered in the roots style so influential during his pre-Them career. Remembering Now also embraces the musical rearview, but refracted through the lens of the present. He revels in the brands of Irish R&B, Celtic blues, country, soul, and balladry that made him, but was pursued so intimately on questing albums from 1979's Into the Music and 1991's Hymns to the Silence. Morrison's lyrics here reveal what he's learned in 80 years. Over 14 songs, he plays guitar, saxophone, and piano; he's backed by his quintet, horns, a backing chorus, Seth Lakeman's Celtic fiddle, and strings by the Fews Ensemble, conducted by Joanne Quigley. Opener "Down to Joy" was featured in director Kenneth Branagh's 2021 film Belfast. A swinging Celtic soul jam, it offers punchy, elegant horns, chunky Stax-esque guitars, and a whining pedal steel above a shuffling beat, as Morrison testifies to gratitude and amorous devotion: "She was standing there before me (There before me) When I was coming down/I said I do adore thee (I adore thee) When I was coming down to joy…. "If It Wasn't for Ray" is a skiffle-drenched, countrified R&B tune offered in tribute to Ray Charles, giving the icon much credit for his own career. "Haven't Lost My Sense of Wonder" is a poignant, tender manifesto. Above a whispering B-3, he sings, "I haven't lost my sense of wonder/even though things aren't working out… Though I've had my fill, I've been through the mill/I'm still signing "peace, be still." "Lover, Lover and Beloved" is a country-soul tune that recalls Charles' great country ballads with its orchestration, and it's sung with raw, simmering passion. Second single "Cutting Corners," is a rock-kissed Celtic soul tune drenched in loneliness and regret despite its hook. Morrison takes a gratifying saxophone solo. The next three selections – "Back To Writing Love Songs," "The Only Love I Ever Need Is Yours," and "Once In A Lifetime Feelings" – are excellent, tender expressions of love in different musical vernaculars. The next three – "Stomping Grounds," "Memories and Visions" and the revelatory "When The Rains Came" (the latter could have been on Common One) – look to the past to find equilibrium in the here and now. "Remembering Now" is a resonant, autobiographical, jazz-blues ballad with killer B-3 from Richard Dunn. Nine-minute closer "Stretchin' Out" is a vamp driven textural gospel-blues driven by sweeping strings, piano and bass that is simply one of his most transcendent songs. Summarily, Remembering Now is aptly titled in its manner of observing personal history through the lens of life in the process of being lived in the moment. Morrison's been rambling in strange territory for the last five years, but this is proof that the restless wandering spirit didn't forget his Muse, or who he is.

Review (Mojo Magazine) : “Pretending my life is not in ruins/Pretending I'm not depressed.” So ran the opening lines on Pretending, the quietly devastating final song of Van Morrison’s last album of new music, 2022’s What’s It Gonna Take. Maybe you didn’t make it that far, beaten down by all those songs about government mind control and the World Economic Forum. But here was the sound of a man in crisis, unsure whether he was having “some kind of breakthrough [or] a nervous breakdown” and putting it all in song. Well, something has changed, and maybe it was that act of excoriating self-analysis. Because, after two restorative 2022 covers albums (Moving On Skiffle and the pointedly titled Accentuate The Positive) and last year’s archive collection, New Arrangements And Duets, comes what might be Morrison's best album since 1991’s Hymns To The Silence. It begins with a brace of easeful, radiant openers, Down to Joy (initially recorded for Kenneth Branagh’s 2021 film, Belfast) and If It Wasn’t For Ray, a salute to Ray Charles, that, in its “da-da-da-da dup-da-da-da-da-da” scat, musically quotes another Morrison’s soul paean, Jackie Wilson Said. The third song, I Haven’t Lost My Sense Of Wonder is, of course, another act of self-reference, echoing the seven-minute title track of Morrison’s vastly underrated 1984 LP. It’s also a declaration of intent, that this album will reconnect with both the laid-back Hammond and saxophone groove of that particular album and the heightened state of consciousness that has defined Morrison’s finest work. However, the inclusion of string arranger Fiachra Trench (who last worked extensively with Morrison on 2006’s Pay The Devil) points to another influence, that of Avalon Sunset’s soaring romantic lyricism. As with many of Morrison’s 21st Century releases, Remembering Now admittedly runs long at 63 minutes and while the first half possesses a freewheeling intimacy that is hard to resist, the record truly opens up on Once In A Lifetime Feelings a Don Black co-write which finds Van driving down to Monte Carlo, surprised by his own romantic optimism and the sweetly aching Stomping Ground, in which the singer yearns, once again, for vanished memories of Belfast’s Strandtown and “the Church of Ireland’s… six bells chime”. “See where I started from”, sings the impassioned Morrison, and this, in part, seems to be the goal of Remembering Now, to get back to the real soul. But in the majestic final half of the record, particularly on the mantric, waltzing title track and epic, rhapsodic closer, Stretching Out the title of the album takes on another meaning. This is Van Morrison remembering how to be in the moment, realising that the days of wonder are not in the past or lying in ruins, they are in the moment. They are now.

Review (The Independent) : 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.) Into this context comes Remembering Now – a solidly enjoyable album sits as many leagues above Morrison’s recent slump as it does below his best work. The album opens with one of its best tracks – “Down to Joy”, an upbeat, soul-tinged number that was nominated for an Oscar in 2022, having appeared first on the soundtrack to Kenneth Branagh’s awards season stalking-horse Belfast. “If It Wasn’t For Ray”, an enjoyable tribute to the late Ray Charles, has the structure and feel of an early Morrison song, and, fittingly, allows the keys and organ to shine. At 14 tracks, Remembering Now has a slight paunchiness to it – something that grates particularly during the drearier slow numbers, such as “The Only Love I Ever Need Is Yours” and “Memories and Visions”. If it is missing the volcanic energy of his early work, that’s probably fair enough, given the man is now pushing 80. But there are times when this album seems as spiritually optimistic as any he’s ever put out. “Haven’t lost my sense of wonder,” he insists, in the title lyric of the album’s third song. For the first time in a long while, we’ve reason to believe him.

Review (Uncut) : Let’s go back. Let’s go way, way, way back – to the mystic avenue and the ancient highway; to the days when the rains came and the days of blooming wonder; to Orangefield, Hyndford Street and the Church of Ireland where the Sunday six bells chime. To the days before dodgy anti-lockdown sermonising and endless albums of duets and re-recordings, skiffle, R&B and blues covers. To the time, one might argue, when Van Morrison took his unique and vaulting talents seriously. Without wishing to oversell it, the best of Remembering Now – at least half of the 14 tracks – finds Morrison on his finest form since the late ’80s and early ’90s. The title refers not only to the recurring lyrical theme of a man in his eightieth year simultaneously inhabiting both his past and present, but the rich sense of musical retrieval, too. Throughout, Morrison consciously invokes key moments from across his six-decade recording career, most frequently the lushly meditative landscape of albums such as Poetic Champion’s Compose, Avalon Sunset and Enlightenment, but also the expansive explorations of Veedon Fleece, Into The Music and Common One. As they were on the first of those two groups of records, Fiachra Trench’s simpatico string arrangements are a prominent texture, alongside horns, Hammond organ, Seth Lakeman’s fiddle and warm, gospel-infused backing vocals. What truly stands out, however, is Morrison’s renewed commitment to making (almost) every song count: musically, vocally and emotionally. “The concept of the flow is beyond thought, beyond analysis,” he said of writing songs for this record and, indeed, it sounds very much as though he has resumed a dialogue with the inarticulate speech of the heart. There is ample evidence of spiritual curiosity being reawakened. The words to the easefully swinging “Love, Lover And Beloved” are taken from a book by Michael Beckwith, leader of Agape, an LA-based spiritual centre. The song ends with a burbling testimony to “my precious one”, Morrison once again trysting at the point where earthly and heavenly love connect. The becalmed contemplation of “Haven’t Lost My Sense Of Wonder”, meanwhile, provides proof of the holy magic Morrison can conjure with just three chords and an ache for the “green fields of summer”. Remembering Now is not always so thrillingly airborne, but even at cruising altitude it offers a pleasing variety of styles and approaches. “Down To Joy”, which first appeared in Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, makes for a solidly soulful opener in the mould of “Tore Down A La Rimbaud” and “Real Real Gone”. The lithe, jaunty “Back To Writing Love Songs” boasts the closest thing to a pop hook Morrison has produced in many years. “The Only Love I Ever Need Is Yours” is a miniature chamber piece, and one of three songs with lyrics written by Don Black, Morrison’s occasional collaborator in recent years. Black’s words on “Once In A Lifetime Feelings” skew towards bland, but the song itself is lovely, graced by Lakeman’s campfire violin and Morrison’s bluesy guitar picking. At its midpoint, Remembering Now starts pushing from the foothills towards transcendence. “Stomping Ground” is a wondrous litany of significant Belfast landmarks, its simple elegance crowned by a glorious string arrangement blossoming into Morrison’s heartfelt saxophone solo. He walks the same haunted hometown streets on the snappy, noirish R&B of the title track, in which our man is trapped between all that then and all this now, rapping with a mantra-like intensity. Here, the need feels urgent: “This is who I am!” The stately “Memories And Visions” finds him more composed, back on higher ground, communing serenely with the spirit. Though the energy levels are a tad sluggish, Morrison pushes through to the revelation that “that ain’t all there is…” “When The Rains Came” is a sparse, stilled folk-blues, a masterful exercise in suspense and atmosphere unspooling over six and a half minutes. While the title references the opening lines of “Brown Eyed Girl”, during the closing moments Morrison is utterly lost in the kind of rapturous incantation – “take my hand, child, walk with me” – which briefly evokes the farthest reaches of “When Heart Is Open” from Common One. Remembering Now is too long. It could do without “If It Wasn’t For Ray”, a throwaway patchwork of offhand rhymes and rote melody, and the blandly pedestrian “Cutting Corners”. The painfully punning “Colourblind”, meanwhile, has no business breaking the spell Morrison conjures on the album’s home stretch, which peaks with the magnificent closer, “Stretching Out”. Fulfilling the promise of the title, it’s a nine-minute tour de force which revisits the pulsing musical landscape of “You Don’t Pull No Punches, But You Don’t Push The River” from Veedon Fleece. Morrison fixates on the locale of “Shady Lane”, which one fancies is the totemic magnetic north of his youth, Cyprus Avenue, viewed through the lens of his older self. It’s almost impossibly thrilling, the kind of song you longed for him to write again but never quite believed he would. “Do I know you from way back?” he keens, wonderstruck all over again. Remembering Now is the deeply heartening sound of an artist recognising himself.

Review (Muziekkrant OOR) : Van Morrison kennen we als getalenteerd artiest maar ook als boze witte man. Zijn wappie-albums Latest Record Project en What’s It’s Gonna Take liggen nog vers in het geheugen. Sindsdien is hij echter onmiskenbaar bezig met een charmeoffensief. Op zijn laatste platen komen geen omstreden politieke standpunten meer voorbij en klinkt de muziek vitaal en geïnspireerd. Dat was al zo op de coveralbums Moving On Skiffle en Accentuate The Positive en dat is helemaal op het nieuwe Remembering Now. Hierop is de 79-jarige Ierse legende Back To Writing Love Songs. Liedjes met een kop en een staart, een memorabele melodielijn, een herkenbare tekst en een flinke dosis melancholie. Het album opent sterk met Down To Joy, dat we al kennen van de film Belfast. If It Wasn’t For Ray en Cutting Corners ademen de sfeer van zijn werk uit de vroege jaren zeventig. Haven’t Lost My Sense Of Wonder is een mooie Dylanesque ballade met een lekker jengelend Hammond-orgel. Datzelfde instrument geeft When The Rains Came een onmiskenbaar gospelgevoel. The Only Love I Ever Need Is Yours put uit dezelfde bron als Have I Told You Lately That I Love You? Slotnummer Stretching Out kent eenzelfde stream of consciousness als ooit zijn debuutalbum Astral Weeks. Kort samengevat: op het zeer gevarieerde en van mooie strijkersarrangementen voorziene Remembering Now gaat Van Morrison er nog eens vol voor en dat levert een uitstekend album op.