I got hit by a bow and arrow

Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts.

14/10/90 : Enlightenment - Van Morrison 

Our third visit with Van the Man, and my previous experiences with him have been a mix of well-crafted tunes and aimless Celtic noodlery so I'm expecting this to be one or the other.  And whilst I do own one Van album, it's not this one (4/12).

Hmmm - it's somewhat of a mix of craft and aimless noodlery.  The songs are generally well put together, but the man just doesn't know when to stop a good thing - two of the tracks are over six minutes long and "In The Days Before Rock And Roll" is a very tiresome eight minutes.  When he gets it right though, as he does on "Real Real Gone" and "Memories" they work really well.  There's also some fantastic musicians supporting him as well - they really elevate the songs.  I like the album cover as well - it's nicely mysterious but does suggest enlightenment.

We're at #5 with a new entry in the charts this week at the start of a six week run, but he did come back for another five week run next year.  The rest of the top five were The Charlatans and Status Quo (both new entries), The Three Tenors and George Michael with no more new entries in the top ten.

Wikipedia has a collection of random sentences vaguely related to the album - it's his twentieth album (he's up to 46 now!), the piano was played by Micheal O'Suilleabhain (who was quite a big thing in the world of Irish music), the brass section was made up by British jazz musicians from the 60s and "In The Days Before Rock And Roll" is a collaboration with Paul Durcan (who is quite a big thing in the world of Irish poetry).  It also did surprisingly well in the US - getting to #62.

"Customers also listened to" Roger Waters, Tim Buckley, Steve Forbert and The Band - a somewhat curious mix.  I mostly didn't mind this, but with some judicious editing it could have been a little gem - so I was left feeling slightly disappointed by it, which I wasn't expecting at all.

07/10/90 - Not my cup of tea (again)
21/10/90 - I liked this

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