Last modified on Thu 6 May 2021 08.36 EDT
Even a man as implacably opposed to lockdown as Van Morrison â who spent 2020 releasing songs rubbishing science as âcrooked factsâ, mocking people for wearing masks and describing the government as âfascist bulliesâ while also invoking the Berlin Wall â might be forced to concede it had its advantages. After all, it gave him the time to write the material for Latest Record Project Volume 1, a 28-song, two-hour-plus opus that allows him to set out his latterday worldview more fully than any previous work.
Van Morrison: Latest Record Project Volume 1 album cover
Morrisonâs longstanding sense of distrust â the result of some dubious contracts he signed in the 1960s â long ago calcified into a
Van Morrison s Latest Record Project Vol 1 is his 42nd studio album
Credit: Bradley Quinn
It is sometimes said of great vocalists that they could sing the phone book and make it worth listening to. Well, there are moments on Van Morrison’s new album when you may find yourself wishing he would just wrap his golden vocal cords around a text as unremarkable as a telephone directory, and stop bloody moaning.
The Northern Irish singer-songwriter is 75, still in remarkably fine voice, and clearly filled with creative energy; this, you might think, would give him at least something to be grateful for. But his almost heroically grouchy 42nd album suggests otherwise. Entirely written and recorded during the pandemic, Latest Record Project Volume 1 is a sourly-titled double album (triple on vinyl) of 28 songs, during which he barely has a good word to sing about anything. The track listing speaks volumes: The Long Con; Big Lie; Diabolic Pressure; Blue Funk; Stop Bitching, Do Somethin’;
Van Morrison Delivers Some Self-Aware Soul on New Song Latest Record Project
Track will appear on singer s upcoming album of the same name
Jon Blistein, provided by
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Latest Record Project: Volume 1, set to arrive May 7th via Exile/BMG.
“Latest Record Project” is a cheeky bit of classic yet self-aware soul. It finds Morrison pairing vintage sonics Hammond organ, shuffling drums, backing vocalists cooing “sha-la-la” with the musings of an artist who has a back catalog packed with hits but hasn’t ceased making new music: “Have you got my latest songs I’m singing?/You got my latest songs I’m singing?/Not something from so long ago/Not something that you might want to know/But something I can relate to in the present.”