Van Morrison
Album: Born To Sing:No Plan B
Label: Blue Note
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.vanmorrison.com

That George Ivan Morrison continues to find reason to get behind the mic is surely a cause for some rejoicing in the aisles. For even if he aims high and misses his target, it's usually worth hearing him do it.

This time out though he manages to not just hit the bull but obliterate it. Born To Sing is his best album in many a long year. Sharp, incisive, uncluttered, he choses a smoky jazz-blues settings for a set of songs that spit their creator's disgust at the bloated excesses of global capitalism.

Goin' Down To Monte Carlo not only trumpets his objections to the monuments to conspicuous consumption that gather there, but also rails against the phoney jazz that passes for musical entertainment in its swanky bars and brasseries. Such empty wealth is surely the motivation for If In Money We Trust, in which he imagines the death of the Good Lord, slain on the altar of Mammon.

Musically, it is relaxed, assured, not without humour and with a series of highly persuasive hooks and Moondance-esque melodies. Pagan Heart is a lengthy blues exploration laced with references to John Lee Hooker and even The Doors, while Open the Door (To Your Heart) provides a warm, soulful introduction to the album and Mystic of the East nods to his earlier Into the Mystic but plucks out a slow walking Crescent City walkin' blues that's build for comfort not speed.

Sounds about right.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk