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Astral Weeks | 
| Artist: Van Morrison
Creator: Jay Berliner
Label: Warner Brothers
Category: Music
Buy New: $10.78
Rating:  1 reviews
Media: LP Record
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 12.6 x 12.6 x 0.2
UPC: 075992717618
EAN: 0075992717618
Release Date: October 17, 1990
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
| • | Astral Weeks | | • | Beside You | | • | Sweet Thing | | • | Cyprus Avenue | | • | The Way Young Lovers Do | | • | Madame George | | • | Ballerina | | • | Slim Slow Slider |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Album Description
Pressed on 180gram vinyl. Mastered from the original analog master tapes and it features all original packaging 1968's Astral Weeks remains not only Morrison's masterpiece, but one of the greatest records ever made. A haunting, deeply personal collection of impressionistic Folk styled epics recorded by an All Star Jazz backing unit including bassist Richard Davis and drummer Connie Kay, its poetic complexity earned critical raves but made only a minimal commercial impact. Astral Weeks had been dark and anguished.
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| Customer Reviews:
"If I ventured in the slipstream, beneath the viaducts of your dream..." July 28, 2008
finulanu (Here, there, and everywhere)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is my favorite Van Morrison album by a very long shot. I got it in summer 2006 (the best summer of my life thus far), and despite the fact that I only picked it up in the last week of August, it quickly became an integral part of my soundtrack during that wonderful summer, along with A Love Supreme and The Velvet Underground and Nico (two other masterpieces). But it's not just nostalgia that determines this my favorite Van album. It's also the strength of the songs. And the wistful lyrics, which paint a clear portrait of Van's youth in Belfast, Ireland. And the music, a combination of jazz, R&B, and folk. And Van's vocals. He sings like a man possessed on several of these tracks.
If you're a Van fan, you've probably heard several stories about this album's genesis. Like how it was cut over three sessions in New York shortly after Van escaped his dead-end contract with Bang records. Or how most of the musicians who recorded it were jazz musicians, including Connie Kay of the Modern Jazz Quartet or Richard Davis, who does some of the best bass playing in history on this record, especially on the title song and "Madame George" and also showed up on Eric Dolphy's wonderful Out to Lunch LP. Or how the flautist on these recordings was never properly identified. Or how Van locked himself up in a glass box during all of the sessions, never introducing himself to his own musicians. Or how, when asked by his band how they wanted him to play, he told them to play whatever they felt like, not even giving them anything to base their playing off of outside of a few chords he strummed on his acoustic guitar.
Needless to say, there's a lot of mystique surrounding this record, and even more in the music itself. This is the kind of album that can really take you away to a fantasy world. It'll take you away to another time, another place. The album's reincarnation themeed title track is especially good at doing so, and makes for a great way to start a masterpiece of an album. I don't even notice its seven minutes. I just sit back, and let the flute, the bass, the vibes, the vocals, and everything else about it wash over me.
But the real meat is in tracks three through six. "Sweet Thing" is my favorite Van Morrison song ever. Van's vocals are as raw and intense as they've ever been, and his lyrics are downright poetic. The piping, improvised flute solos are gorgeous, and the licks played by the string quartet are gripping. "Cypress Avenue" is another just classic. It's based on a blues structure, but it's not really blues, because the main hooks are played on a harpsichord and a fiddle. The fiddle is the highlight of the piece, constantly adding its own lines of melody and giving the song more depth. "The Way Young Lovers Do" is a clever tune, mixing Baroque string arrangements with Stax-Volt horns and culminating in a jazzy trumpet break. And "Madame George" establishes one of my favorite trends in Van's music: basing a song around a single, simple groove that gradually reveals itself to bea song-long crescendo. And when this particular the crescendo hits its peak, it moves me. Add the crying strings, the wonderful bass work, and the lyrics, and you've got a masterpiece. Much have been made about the lyrics, with some saying that "Madame George" is a drag queen. Van has claimed that "Madame George" is, in fact, a composite of people Van knew from his Belfast childhood. Whatever the song's true meaning (though it's worth noting that Van's real name is George Ivan Morrison), the lyrics are pure poetry.
There are other fine tracks here, too. "Slim Slow Slider" manages to be a restrained free jazz song, moving from a truly haunting beginning to a chaotic conclusion that I think is supposed to be symbolic of a drug addict's death. For some reason, people tend to dislike "Beside You," but I think it's a nicely moody composition with wonderful vocals and a gorgeous flute part. To me, the closest thing to a weak spot is "Ballerina." It's not bad - in fact, it's really pretty, and has a good arrangement - but it rambles, and it's unimpressive compared to the other seven compositions.
This isn't really an album as much as it is an experience. A beautiful, intense, ethereal, haunting experience. It's unlike any other record I own. It's a genre unto its own - the record's an impossible one to classify. I've heard over twenty Van Morrison discs, but even the best of them can't match up to this. An absolute masterpiece.
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