11-May-07 London Concert Review

TimesOnline: Roundhouse, London Review

As he reaches pensionable age, it might be too late to expect Van Morrison to start displaying tangible signs of happiness. At his peak though, Belfast’s questing blues emissary has been peerless when it came to playing out his internal conflicts on a stage, repeating phrases until they turned into redemptive mini-mantras; using a harmonica to pull away from the rhythm of his band, then suddenly locking back into a groove you thought had come
apart.

At this Roundhouse show just a couple of those moments would have probably been enough to appease the diehards. Instead, Morrison played the parodically grumpy old man with a volley of songs about tabloid intrusion ( Talk is Cheap) and the solitude of fame ( Back on Top). Wearing his customary hat and shades, he seemed uninterested
and uncommunicative. In the case of these songs and selections from Pay the Devil, his recent country album, it was tempting to blame the choice of material.

That was something you couldn’t very well do in the case of Moondance. Across the decades Morrison has reinvented the song countless times, but this version – in which his three backing vocalists handled the entirety of the second verse – was tantamount to a decommissioning.

Finding new ways into old material is a problem for many a venerable singer. Recent shows by another great white 1960s blues singer, Terry Reid, demonstrated how vital a younger group can be when helping an artist to rediscover himself. If we presume that Van Morrison assembled his own band, what did this gang of middle-aged session musicians, going about their business with deferential precision, say about him? That old age has made him value virtuosity over spirit?

You could drop the needle on an album by Them – the R&B urchins fronted by Morrison in the early 1960s – and remember how the opposite used to be true. When he played two songs from that era – Baby Please Don’t Go and Gloria – you might have expected the touchpaper of memory to spark just in time to rescue them from the hotel-lobby R&B arrangements of their current incarnations. But no.

Amid all this listless professionalism, only Brown-Eyed Girl lifted the torpor. That was less to do with the singer and more to do with the “sha-na-nas” of an audience that had paid for the chance to sing them.
-Pete Paphides

Setlist:
The Train Kept A-Rollin’ [*, NE]
Talk Is Cheap
Back On Top
Cleaning Windows > Boppin’The Blues > Be Bop A Lula
Days Like This
Stop Drinking
Moondance
Don’t Worry About A Thing
There Stands The Glass
Playhouse
My Bucket’s Got A Hole In It
Don’t Start Crying Now > Custard Pie
Real Real Gone > You Send Me
Bright Side Of The Road
Baby Please Don’t Go
Precious Time [scat ending]
All Work And No Play
Jackie Wilson Said
Wild Night
Domino
Brown Eyed Girl
Gloria