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Album: Van Morrison - What's It Gonna Take? | reviews, news & interviews

Album: Van Morrison - What's It Gonna Take?

Album: Van Morrison - What's It Gonna Take?

Pernicious lockdown conspiracies, leavened by depressed confessions

The mystifying chasm between Van Morrison’s personality and music became total with last year’s Latest Record Project Volume 1, as masterfully sung, textbook R&B rolled under biliously paranoid words.

This 28-song more than double-album was loaded with the likes of “The Long Con”, which found Van “targeting individuals” who are “pulling the strings” and “trying to erase me”, as he came out fighting mad at lockdown, and the pandemic’s temerity in keeping him offstage. Despite singing “Why Are You On Facebook?”, Van seemed to have swallowed the social media Kool Aid.

Now, here are 15 more songs, several not much shorter than “Madame George”, but misplacing its choleric grandeur and humane ache. What’s It Gonna Take?’s cover – Cold War-era sheeple manipulated on a hidden puppet-master’s strings – is Van’s equivalent to Born Again Dylan’s Saved, in which God’s hand pointed down in blazing judgement, demolishing any possible doubt as to where he’s at.

Near eight-minute opener “Dangerous” finds Van quietly satisfied at his last opus’s savage reviews – clearly, he’s doing something right, “too close to the truth…calling them on all their lies”. “Somebody said it was about the da-ta,” he says, ironically spitting and snapping the last word, before asking for “proof” which will never satisfy. The Hammond-heavy music and Van’s singing are meanwhile buoyant and wholly at ease, stretching out as if at a gig. Though this album is on the planet’s biggest major label, he’s making records with a liberty matched only by Neil Young.

Anyone still pining for the Sixties generation to re-engage, for Jagger to write another “Sympathy for the Devil” or McCartney a “She’s Leaving Home” – well, Van is absolutely plugged into the nightly news, furiously taking notes. “No more Economic Forum,” he declares on the brooding, Ray Charles-like “Money from America”, which finds “Prince Charles…at the burning Gates”. “Gates is playing God/Government keeps lying,” “Can’t Go On This Way” says, ramming the conspiracy home. “Don’t know what to do about the common cold in the head…”

It’s easy to pick button-pushing lines, as the album’s monomania sinks in. On “Fighting Back Is the New Normal”, he’s “gonna stop sitting on the fence…take a tip from the French”, also quoting from James Brown’s Nixon-era “I Don’t Want Nobody To Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I’ll Get It Myself)”, as he imagines himself on the barricades with the gilets jaunes’ Civil Rights frauds. “If you don’t accept the drip, gonna call you a conspiracy theorist…” “Fodder for the Masses” advises. “Fill you up with fake news for their masters”; “Damage and Recovery” castigates “snowflakes hiding in their houses”. Messianic conviction that only he and his fellow travellers can see clearly, and contempt for the “masses”’ blind ignorance, permeates every line.

And yet, the oppressive cloud lifts as this album heads home. “Absolutely Positively the Most”, with its Latin Hammond groove and gospel harmonies, preaches that “love is the law”, and “we’re all part of the same whole”, and the country swing of “I Ain’t No Celebrity” returns to the relative comfort of abiding Van gripes.

Then, with the staccato stream of consciousness of “Fear and Self-Loathing in Las Vegas”, we’re abruptly in the emotional heart of things. Thin Hammond stabs and tense beats stalk Van as he awaits showtime in the Nevada night, trying to “learn how to love myself” and taping new songs just to “pretend everything’s alright”, a lugubrious sax solo bringing the steamy atmosphere of Mob-era showbiz, before a crystalline haze of piano conjures true R&B beauty. “Pretending” is still more nakedly personal, a confessional of depression and professional displacement, vaguely blaming a woman, but really stewing in introspection at a life “in ruins”: “pretending I’m in the present tense/I’m really miles away in a trance”; “pretending I’m sleeping at night”. The music’s rolling grace brews up into Too Late To Stop Now-style brass. Avalon Sunset or Enlightenment at their best also come to mind, as Van lets go of his prosaic rage, and is transported.

Listen back to earlier lyrics here - “You can’t go out dancing/Can’t find any joy” on “Can’t Go on This Way”, or “Nervous Breakdown”, where “breakdown” and “breakthrough” blur, and Van is saying that being prevented from performing has literally made him ill. After being denied live music’s healing for so long, millions would sympathise. His song avalanche’s response is typically egocentric, pernicious, and already outdated, as his current US tour continues unimpeded. Hope also remains for his art, despite its current, bizarre terminus.

Van is saying that being prevented from performing has literally made him ill

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Editor Rating: 
2
Average: 2 (1 vote)

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Comments

What the hell happened to this guy…has he made a good album since 1978’s “Wavelength”??

listen

Wavelength was CRAP (apart from Checkin' It Out & Natalia) but 'Poetic Champions Compose' was good, as was 'Irish Heartbet', 'Enlightenment', 'Avalon Sunset', 'Hymns to the Silent', 'Back on Top', What's wrong with this Pcture?','Magic time', & Keep It Simple' .... oh, and his last one wasn't bad either !

Yeah every album from Common One to Back on Top are classics. Get a clue.

Yes, but not this one. Not by a long shot. Sad.

I beg to differ. Hey, I don't care for EVERY Van song but .... Sometimes Blah Blah, Damage & Recovery, I Ain't No celebrity, Stage Name, Pretending --- all now firmly ensconced on my iPod !

What's happened to him? He's exercising his right to free speech. BTW why not start thinking for yourself, not just accepting the agreed "right opinion" all the time. Try it. It's liberating.

Yea, verily. This is not a new deluded Van. It’s in the same tradition as The Great Deception on Hard Nose The Highway, just different times and different issues. It’s a beautiful album, beautifully sung and beautifully produced. If you can’t accept it because of your politics, well, just admit it.

Amen

prolific, consistent, musical genius.

One protest song would be okay, but an album-full is insufferable. The music and musicianship is first rate. I wouldn't have minded it as much if Van would have widened the scope of his lyrics to address themes of inequity, suppression, control, etc. in general, rather than pin everything on COVID. If I block out the lyrics, however, it's a great album.

Errr ...... There's quite a lot of humour & sarcasm in the Albums' lyrics. Don't think ol' Van wants you you to take them THAT seriously !

He does want us to take it THAT seriously, and that's the tragedy of the album. One million dead in the USA, and one-third of cases were preventable with vaccination. The numbers do not lie; Van does.

You are expressing your right to call Van Morrison a liar. He's been criticized a million times. You are just one more, so don't think of yourself as "rather special".. If you want music with no controversy try boy bands. I think that might be your genre. Because you have been educated not to think for yourself your mind is in a weakened state and is easily compromised. Never listen to Van again and never post online. I want to help you.

What a sad old man. Sure the music is great, but he's got a real warped view of the world. Conspiracy theory nutjob.

It’s refreshing to see an artist take a stand against the mainstream, when the mainstream has been proven to be lies. Despite all the lies, too many keep right on swallowing them proving Marx correct. It’s exactly why Morrison stays relevant.

Dangerously delusional. You people have deaths on your hands.

The ones that love this album are indeed from the right and tend to believe the lies spewed by their mis-informers. Being left is correct, as it takes others' well-being seriously, vs. our own selfish inconveniences as more important. Van has created great music recently, but this is not- regardless of the instrumentation put forth. It alienates in a haughty, selfish manor, and if Van lost someone close to C19, he too would change his bs.

He has become a grouchy old man, yelling to all the youngsters to “get off my lawn”. Sad to see what he has become.

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