Poetic Champions Compose
by Van Morrison

Excellent songs : Queen of the slipstream.....The mistery....sometimes I feel like a motherless child....Someone like you

From Timhop 12/17/2014 19:44 | #129559

The most criminally under-rated of Van's later slew of albums, all of which sought a kind of transcendental spirituality. This was the one that nailed what he had been trying to do on albums like Inarticulate Speech of the Heart and Sense of Wonder. It all hangs together perfectly, while the earlier attempts just never gel, with too many out of place tracks. Side one ends on a dark existential note, and side two then lifts you up. I'm not a Christian, and you don't have to be one to be affected by this marvelous 'armchair for the soul' of an album. After this album and its lovely predecesor, No Guru No Method No Teacher, it was all downhill for The Man.

From jhuik 01/28/2012 12:41 | #36024

This album is completely underrated in the VM canon and has some very poorly thought out out ratings here. Go back and listen again, people! Spanish Steps opens the album... leading into The Mystery which can be thought of as Van's mature revisitation of Into the Mystic. Queen of the Slipstream is an upbeat love song. Then comes a rolling bass line to open up a patented Van Morrison jazz meditation, I Forgot. If you don't love the way he breaks into the line "If my heart could do my thinking and my head begin to feel" ....well there's not much hope for you. The next two songs are just fine, leading into the three central tracks which are all very good late Van Morrison. Alan Watts Blues is as much fun as you will ever have listening to Van. As is Give my my Rapture. Did Ye Get Healed is merely a good song.

I had older siblings who listened to Van from the classic era. This was the first record of his that I bought (during university) and I loved it. It might be second level Van Morrison but that still makes it better than 98% of the crap anyone else has ever produced.