Keep It Simple Reviews
Rolling Stone:
At this point in his career, Van Morrison is less interested in surprises than in further exploring his long-standing obsessions: surviving the shocks of this life and rising gracefully toward the next one. Keep It Simple finds him looking back on his sixty-two years, filled with longing — for home, for deliverance from the world's demands, for spiritual transcendence. He boasts of surviving the "School of Hard Knocks," wryly chronicles a newfound sobriety in the aging roustabout's lament "Don't Go to Nightclubs Anymore" and sails into the mystic on the album closer, "Behind the Ritual." Typically, the band settles into a comfortable groove while Morrison lifts off into the trancelike realm he calls "entrainment." Meanwhile, the arrangements are elegantly spare: subtle works of guitar, bass, keyboards, percussion, occasional backup singers and, at the center of it all, Morrison's incomparable voice, as expressive as ever. "Only a fool could think that things would ever be simple again," he sings on the title track. But on this simple, soulful record, that kind of foolishness feels like wisdom.
-ANTHONY DeCURTIS
Variety:
After a string of efforts that fit distinctly into jazz or country categories, Van Morrison returns to working mostly blues-based tunes shaped by other distinctly American roots music forms. The voice is soulful, expressive and powerful, the tunes mostly laid-back, the guitar-and-organ-driven band sharp and the sparse arrangements fulfilling. His approach is a good one for a 62-year-old: he sings wistfully about days gone by, cutting out the clubbing and emphasizing the search for enlightenment. It's a familiar theme - it felt like he spent the '80s in this terrain - but here the effort is more rooted and focused musically, sanguine even. Sparks don't fly too often, though he does capture some vintage Van magic on "That's Entrainment" and the country-soul ballad "Lover Come Back," two tunes that strive to roll country, blues and soul music into a single ball and succeed on every level.
-Phil Gallo
Timmins Daily Press:
Imagine walking into an intimate 500-seat club and seeing Van the Man with a tight jazz/blues band backing him on new material that just feels so right. That's what you get here. Of course it's a little mellower in the studio. But when Van brings back bassist David Hayes and the super-fine axe work of John Platania ("Wavelength") and John Allair and Mick Green also drop into the mix, it's all good and organic. It's an album that finds Van reaching back in his mind. Getting back to simple feel and dynamics, and as Morrison laments on "No Thing" shows he is just fine with where he is now in life. It's a slow cooker and wow that voice just gets better with age.
-John Emms
Pop Matters:
On his albums, Van Morrison has presented enough personas over his 40-plus-year career that some ambitious film director could riff on them as easily and fruitfully as Todd Haynes did on Dylan’s for I’m Not There. Van Morrison is a poet, an Irish folkie, a philosopher, a mystic, a showman, and a teenager-at-heart still dreaming of the R&B records he heard on the radio decades ago. In recent years, he has become a bluesman, complete with hat, sunglasses and deep voice. Or a cool-as-cucumber jazzy blues vocalist, at least. On his latest album, Keep It Simple, Morrison is somewhere between that jazz-blues cool cat and the head-in-the-clouds poet/philosopher of Astral Weeks, et al. For a stretch near the start, he almost literally switches back and forth, adopting a standard blues form nearly every other song.
On the title track, he sings of being caught between the cold, hard reality of life and “pipe dreams”. Musically he’s in similar territory this time, halfway between the blues’ reality and the idle dreaming of a pop melody strummed on an acoustic guitar. In both cases the music is relatively simple, as the title promises. The instruments are few, and sparsely presented. That makes a banjo stand out nicely in a few places, strings in others. A few sharp guitar solos are also memorable, and an organ runs through much of the album, sitting comfortably within the blues songs, but also giving the other tracks a complementary glow. This more minimalist approach highlights Morrison’s band’s playing while also keeping his voice always the center of attention. The songs themselves are simple enough to do this as well. No busy arrangements or constructions distract from the central show of Morrison taking a humble little song and singing it.
As Morrison has aged, the enunciation in his singing has grown less distinct. On previous albums in the past decade, and definitely during live performances, it has sometimes seemed like he was mumbling and slurring his way through whole songs. That is mostly not the case here, though he does blur lyrics together in a place or two. Most of the time on Keep it Simple, his singing is worthy of its place at center stage. On “Lover Come Back” and “That’s Entrainment”, he sounds especially good, singing not just clearly, but with that ancient soulfulness that is his hallmark.
Partly because of the singing, “That’s Entrainment” immediately stands out, one to add to the lengthy list of classic Van Morrison songs. The third track, it’s the first riveting moment of the album, possibly the first from Morrison in a while, where he holds time still like he used to. He starts singing right at the song’s opening seconds, painting a picture of a countryside, then of himself standing in rapt fascination, struck by the pure beauty of an unspecified “you”, seemingly the spiritual force of nature, but sung to like a lover. Handclaps and other hand percussion provide the song’s backbone, as Morrison sings up and down the hills of that countryside, eventually expressing his awe in the terms of classic R&B—when “you” come around, it makes him holler, makes him want everyone to shake their collective moneymaker, shake it on down. At first the chorus of “That’s entrainment” is jarring amidst all this ecstasy and calm, if only because it begs the question, “What the hell is entrainment?” As far as I can tell, it’s all about being drawn in and transformed, the way air forms into a cloud.
Throughout the album, there are moments like this where Morrison’s clearly reaching at, or celebrating, something ineffable and inspiring. But he never goes at it quite as overtly or potently. Most of Keep it Simple has a demeanor of ease to it. He writes a couple blues songs, standard in form, and enjoys laying them down with his friends. He writes a simple ‘return to me’ song to a lover, calls it “Lover Come Back”, and stretches it out over five minutes, singing it with drama, but no urgency.
While the songs strive towards familiarity and comfort in their form, Morrison does something similar with the lyrics. Whether singing with yearning about the way the world has changed, or tackling something less serious, he keeps relying on simple rhymes and familiar phrases. “One monkey don’t stop now show,” “I was educated by the school of hard knocks,” “got to run / towards the setting sun.” But despite one song, “Don’t Go to Nightclubs”, that essentially takes “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” and turns it slightly, and another song, “Soul”, that is a walking cliché carrying an air of sincerity about it, you generally get the feeling that the clichés are here on purpose. When during the first song, “How Can a Poor Boy”, Morrison sings, “Tell me what evil lurks in the hearts of men / only the Shadow knows,” he’s obviously up to something. He’s not being lazy; he’s using the familiar to get to something deeper.
It’s the last song, “Behind the Ritual”, where he makes that crystal-clear. The song takes the feeling of comfort behind the album and falls back into it like a bubble-bath, indulging. No longer trying to hold the spotlight, Morrison sings like he’s musing to no one in particular, thinking aloud about “drinking wine in an alley / making time / drinking that wine / in the days gone by.” He turns these words into a circling refrain, as the musicians play along. “Talking all out of my mind,” he sings, eventually emulating that with a whole string of “blah blah blah blah” nonsense words. But before he gets there, he sings his mission statement, spells it out: “Behind the ritual / you find the spiritual.” In one fell swoop, he links communion wine to a wino’s bottle in a paper bag, and highlights the meaning behind the album’s gravitation towards the familiar. Perhaps Keep it Simple is an exercise in going through the motions to get to the spiritual, using the everyday to illuminate the transcendent.
As Morrison puts it right there in the title track, “We’ve got to keep it simple / and that’s that.” But of course it’s more than that. Even by the end of that song, he explains that keeping it simple is what we need to save our selves.
-Dave Heaton
The Buffalo News:
Well, yes, that’s exactly right. “Keep it Simple.” This is the best advice Van Morrison could give himself at this stage of the game, when one can either warmly embrace the career’s twilight with dignity intact, or ruin the canvas with a too-liberal application of color. Morrison’s new one for Lost Highway — a nice fit, that — blends easy-rolling blues, folk and Irish soul with the singer’s ongoing concerns, they being the search for enlightenment, transcendence and uncluttered peace and quiet. The voice can still find hidden folds and wrinkles of emotional implication, and the graceful production leaves ample room for the listener to get lost in. There are no perfunctory time-fillers here, all the songs boasting a feeling of volition and necessity. But even among such stellar company, the album- closing epic “Behind the Ritual” stands out as one of Morrison’s finest. Over a poised shuffle groove, the singer slurs, intones, dances around the edges of the meaning, his activity serving to shine a light on what is unstated, much in the manner that the timeless “Madame George” said so much with so little. Morrison’s sax playing is breathily intimate and warmly intoned, too. “Behind the ritual, you find the spiritual,” our man sings. Nice.
-Jeff Miers
USA Today:
'Simple' pleasures: Morrison’s voice, as exquisite and expressive as ever, dominates this bluesy yet relatively uplifting set of autobiographical tunes as Belfast’s renowned malcontent weighs in on spirituality, lingering wounds and newfound sobriety (which may account for his cheerier tone). While still bitter about betrayals of the past (School of Hard Knocks), he’s also relaxed enough to slip into a soothing trance or folky romp. In spots, particularly Song of Home, he locks into the soulful, country-shaded mystical groove of his glory days.
-Edna Gundersen
Toronto Star:
It should be no surprise that after 33 or 34 albums, the latest Van Morrison opus seems to have slipped past the critical radar. What's another Van Morrison album, more or less? It may not be a groundbreaking effort, but Keep It Simple is Morrison's first collection of all-original songs in a decade or more, and for that reason alone it deserves more than the dismissive toss-off it has been getting. Of almost equal importance is that Morrison produced and arranged all this material, and sits in with a superbly attuned band, adding an impressive sense of commitment to these confessional songs that, for the most part, bespeak a wise and weary poet's soul seeking settlement and reconciliation. Top track: "End of the Land" is a low-key account of a hopeless quest for peace of mind that ends at sunrise in an ineffably eloquent mumble.
-Greg Quill
Columbus Dispatch:
One of pop music's finest singers follows the advice of the title on this good, but not great, album.
Over the gentle guitars, organ, accordion, rhythm section and female backing vocalists, Morrison, 62, adds his ukulele, saxophone and, of course, that supple and soulful voice to 11 originals.
There are fun songs, such as That's Entrainment and Don't Go to Nightclubs Anymore ("Alcohol was too big a price / Listen I just said no dice"). There are a couple of beautiful ballads, such as Lover Come Back and End of the Land.
But perhaps the best song is Soul, with its affirmative message "Soul is not the color of your skin / Soul is the essence, essence from within." Morrison's voice on the track is subtle and smooth instead of strident and scorching.
Several of his lyrics, however, are laced with spite, which keeps the album from being one of his best. For example: "Tell me who's gonna patronize me now" (School of Hard Knocks), "They mocked me when I was singing this song" (Keep It Simple), and "I'm getting too tired to start all over again" (No Thing).
-Gary Budzak
The Times:
On his 33rd studio album, can the Celtic curmudgeon surprise us? Some hip-hop, a dub remix perhaps? No, of course not. Keep it Simple takes the familiar ingredients - R&B, blues, folk and gospel - and melds them into Van's patented Caledonian soul with, as the title suggests, no flash strings or horn charts. But get past the ho-hum boogie-shuffle of How Can a Poor Boy? and a very decent album opens up. There are the gruff reminiscences of School of Hard Knocks, the warm balladry of Lover Come Back and the stirring Soul. In today's febrile pop world, a tour round Van's comfort zone is a perfectly agreeable trip.
-John Bungey
Philadelphia Daily News:
THAT'S ENTRAINMENT:Van Morrison has a novel new expression and song for what he does - "That's Entrainment." It suggests a kind of enchantment or trancelike state that comes on for listeners when we get caught up in the spirit of his moody, heartfelt, often incantational music. And yes, there's plenty to be had on Van the Man's new album, "Keep It Simple" (Lost Highway, B+), from whence that tune springs.
But first, chill.
There are no brassy show horns or blistering rockers on board this time. This is not a "road" album to crank up in the car. The operative words here are subtle, laid back, lulling. It's a production more in the organic, slow blues-meets-Woodstock country spirit of Morrison's classic "Tupelo Honey," warmed by the glow of a Hammond organ, shuffling percussion, softly picked and strummed guitars, and lots of interplay between Van's nuanced, wisdom-filled vocals and his small choir of gospel-laced backup singers.
When played in a quiet environment or heard on earphones, "Keep It Simple" charms with its peace and comfort, with the life experiences Morrison shares - from the preacher's lament, "How Can A Poor Boy," which suggests "You don't believe anything that's true" to the Ray Charles-inspired "(Ain't gonna change) No Thing" to Van's definition of "Soul" as "a feeling deep within. Soul is not the color of your skin."
-JONATHAN TAKIFF
The Sun:
WE give him cosy nicknames like “Van The Man” or “The Belfast Cowboy”.
But the man born George Ivan Morrison 62 years ago says: “Nobody knows me.”
Talking to blues singer and Radio 2 presenter Paul Jones this week, he gave this humble assessment of himself: “Basically, I’m just a simple guy in a complicated business. I’m a working musician, singer, songwriter and that’s really what I do.”
Interviews with Van are as rare as hen’s teeth but this fascinating one with a fellow musician speaks volumes about one of Northern Ireland’s favourite sons.
He gave it to celebrate the imminent release of Keep It Simple, an album containing some of the most confessional lyrics of his 45-year career.
From the opening bars of the bluesy How Can A Poor Boy, you sense he’s sharing a lot more of himself than usual. Van says he’s addressing people who write about him because they always fail to discover his beating heart.
“There’s this whole mythology and propaganda that’s built up over the years about me. None of these people know me. They don’t know where I came from. They don’t know where I’ve been. They don’t know what it took. They don’t how hard it was.”
“I don’t do a lot of interviews,” he tells Jones. “I’d rather put my energy into writing songs than photo ops or talk shows.”
He lets his music do the talking on Keep It Simple, which he describes as an “alchemy of various components” and “very much 2008” and “sounding like nothing I’ve ever done before.”
It’s a rounded work, the most carefully assembled and tightly written of recent times, drawing on his key influences . . . blues, gospel, country and folk.
Rather than taking on today’s music, Van admits the album is more about “rediscovering roots.” The ghosts of Curtis Mayfield, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Hank Williams, Louis Armstrong and Ray Charles walk by his side.
School Of Hard Knocks is classic blue-eyed Van Morrison soul, finding the singer questioning his place in the modern world. “No current currency/No answers — only silence/And nothing is what it’s supposed to be.”
The airy That’s Entrainment, clearly a pun on That’s Entertainment, refers to a scientific term for “synchronised brainwaves” and looks certain to have listeners rushing for the Oxford English Dictionary.
Van hilariously reflects on his life of abstinence with the easy blues of Don’t Go To Nightclubs Anymore. Smoke has driven him out the door, alcohol was too big a price. “I’m such a bore,” he concludes. Simple, sweet acoustic guitar ushers in the title track, and as Van, more instruments and backing singers join in, the album’s essential message is revealed. “You gotta keep it simple and that’s that.”
Song Of Home is a ravishing mix of country and gospel while Soul is a uplifting, life-affirming three-and-a-half minutes complete with elegant sax solo from the man himself.
Last but not least is the seven-minute Behind The Ritual, the nearest we get to the pure Celtic soul sound that has defined the singer’s career. (Slightly worried about the an entire verse of blah, blah, blahs though).
Ultimately, Keep It Simple is a worthy, revealing addition to one of the most impressive catalogues in contemporary music.
After all this time, it’s great to get to know you a bit more, Van.
Nashville Scene:
Soul is a word that is impossible to define, especially when describing music. Yet it’s always meant as a compliment, and, like many of life’s mysterious pleasures, it will move you. It’s also a word that, for more than 40 years now, has been connected with Van Morrison, and for some, he defines the term as magnificently as James Brown, Miles Davis or Aretha Franklin.
On his new album, Keep It Simple, Morrison seems intent on stripping away pretense and getting down to the starkest, most soulful aspect of what he does. The songs, in turn, work around the bare roots of blues, gospel, R&B, country and early rock ’n’ roll.
But despite its obvious intent, and despite its constant self-referential comments about getting down to what matters, the album rarely taps into the uplift—the transcendence—of Morrison at his best. It’s a record about soul music that flashes too little of it.
The problem may start in conception. The songs are so underdeveloped that it sounds as if Morrison went into the studio with a line or a thought, hoping to mine inspiration in the heat of the moment—something he’s done in the past with great reward. But this time the fruits of improvisation fall with a thud, unripened.
Few songs ever grow past the repetition of a few strung-together lines. Too often, he bases lyrics on the kind of throwaway clichés he’s often used for punctuation, such as “one monkey don’t stop no show” or “you make me holler when you shake it on down.” The lyrics tell no stories and offer few memorable images or phrases; worst yet, very little seems to evoke much emotion or passion, from him or from the listener.
Sadly, the vocals and arrangements are nearly as lazy. The Irishman has always mumbled—it’s part of his distinctive twist on the black vocal styles he’s drawn on to establish his own stunning vocal stamp. But here his slurs and asides don’t sound like the result of in-the-moment feeling; they sound tired and rote.
Even the best tunes are incomplete and not nearly as nourishing as they could have been. “End of the Land” sets out with an organ-based, gospel groove, something that brings out the flavor of Morrison’s low-key muttering. “Lover Come Back” features the album’s most developed song idea, and brings out his best vocal performance. In a bluesy moan, he mourns a lost relationship, conveying how the memory of better days dims everything in the present.
But both songs lose steam by falling back on a formula that weighs down every cut on the album: Morrison simply stops nurturing an idea by time he hits midsong. He never offers a fresh line after the first or second verses; instead, time after time, he repeats whatever he said in the first half. He even ends the album by repeating, “blah blah blah blah blah” for more than a minute. It sounds like a tape of ideas he hasn’t bothered to finish yet.
Several seeds present a potential bounty, had Morrison cultivated them. “School of Hard Knocks” begins as a scathing political protest, while “Don’t Go to Nightclubs Anymore” muses on the idea of how aging and burn-out impact the life of a musician or bon vivant. But each song wilts from repetition after the first verse.
Morrison has made as much memorable music as most anyone alive. As recently as 2005’s Magic Time, he’s created new work that lives up to his legacy. Simplicity has always been one of his virtues, but this time he takes the idea too seriously—or maybe not seriously enough.
-Michael McCall
The Guardian:
This is Van Morrison's 33rd studio album - that's a lot of songs, a lot of imagery, a lot of intros and middle-eights. It is, therefore, easy to understand why, 41 years into his solo career, he would want to Keep It Simple. But surely not this simple. Seven of the 11 tracks are tasteful, blues-by-numbers shuffles, with Hammond organ and backing vocals; they are elevated above the norm only by Morrison's velvety gargle. Lyrically, however, he appears to have hit a brick wall. There are "harbour lights" and "foghorns in the night", trains that go "clickety-clack". On End of the Land he proclaims, "If I have to drive all night, just to feel all right," and you wonder when, in recent memory, he has driven anywhere further than Sainsbury's. During Behind the Ritual he gives up on words entirely and sings "blah blah blah blah blah" for a whole verse. Perhaps a spot more complication for album 34 might help.
-Rob Fitzpatrick
Dallas Morning News:
OLD WINE ... : Van Morrison used to be a one-man argument that any Irishman – indeed, any world citizen – could drink deeply of American blues, soul, jazz and country. He also transmuted that common water into robustly idiosyncratic wine, and while his late-period work hasn't necessarily been watered down (his 2006 album Pay the Devil was largely 100-proof country-music covers), it has been less intoxicating.
... AGED, IF NOT VINTAGE: Keep It Simple soberly justifies its title with small-combo renderings of 11 new songs, although titles such as "School of Hard Knocks" indicate a dog-eared thesaurus of artistic clichés. Van the Man is in comfortable vocal form – so comfortable that he fills out "Behind the Ritual" with a few refrains of "blah, blah, blah" – and the musicianship is subtly classy. Yet like Ray Charles and Frank Sinatra, two of his favorite artists, Mr. Morrison in his late period wanders through music that would once have made him strut.
BOTTOM LINE: Simple, but far from stunning.
-Jon M. Gilbertson
Kansas City Star:
If I hadn’t seen my first-ever Van Morrison show last month, I’d probably have a different take on his new record.
His one-hour set at the brink of dusk in Austin, Texas, was an obligation to his label — a way to promote songs from an impending album to a large room full of music-industry and media professionals.
Morrison fulfilled his duty somewhat begrudgingly, at times gruffly. But even if he were going through the motions, he managed to cast a spell on me. His voice that night sounded remarkably agile and fit, like the instrument it has always been.
That was a nice surprise, not only because he’s 62 and he was fighting a cold, but because he dealt with new songs and arrangements; because he also bothered to play his two favorite instruments (sax and ukulele); because he also kept tight reins on his large band; and because he’s nearly halfway into his fifth decade of live performing.
If that was his version of “mailing it in,” like some people complained, I’ll sign for that package anytime.
The album he promoted that night, “Keep It Simple,” may be more treading of water or running in place, but that’s only because it was made by a man whose best days were so eminent and eternal they eclipse material like this that is more grounded and merely respectable. Within the Morrison catalog, “Simple” doesn’t stand out, but plenty of his peers (and some younger folks, too) would be proud to call it theirs.
Morrison wrote everything here and produced it all, too. Over the course of 11 songs and 50 minutes, he abides by the title’s adage. The roads bear no swerves or sharp turns, and the weather stays mostly clear. The music is a warm steady breeze of mid-tempo pop-soul, gospel and blues with an occasional surprise tossed in, like Cindy Cashdollar’s pedal steel in “No Thing.”
He has nothing provocative to say; mostly he seems wistful about the gloaming that has descended upon his life. Lyrically his execution can get clumsy, as in “I Don’t Go to Nightclubs Anymore”: “I’m not a legend in my own mind / Don’t need booze to unwind …” Other times he is more thoughtful, if not poetic, as in the longing “Song of Home”: “I can see the harbour lights / Hear the foghorns in the night / All up and down the lough, calling …” Some of these songs rely on habits and clichés, but he can be forgiven for that: He coined some of them himself.
In Austin, Morrison ended his set with “Behind the Ritual,” the album’s closer, a ditty about “drinking wine” and “making time.” He sang and scatted as he exited, through the rear of the stage, leaving his band behind to jam. Without him, they sounded more visceral — unleashed, out from under their master’s watch.
But without him, they were just another great band making a keen sound. Like his new album, his showcase was a pleasant reminder of how good it is to still have Van Morrison around, even in his more modest moments.
Associated Press:
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Van Morrison takes the title of his new album, "Keep It Simple," to extremes. His first set of self-written songs since 2005's "Magic Time," the Irish legend focuses on laid-back soul and relaxed blues grooves through all eleven cuts.
The lyrics are similarly threadbare, with many of the themes are built around familiar R&B catchphrases: "One monkey don't stop no show," in the song "No Thing," or "I don't get around much anymore," in the song "I Don't Go To Nightclubs Anymore," about how, at age 62, he no longer enjoys the nightlife they way he once did.
On the positive side, Morrison's distinctive, horn-like voice sounds as flexible and expressive as ever. He treats each tune like a late-night improvisation, moaning one line as leisurely as smoke curling from a cigarette tip, then punching out the next like a boxer snapping left-jabs at a sparring partner.
Several lyrics start with an interesting premise, whether it's the back to nature treatise on "End of the Land," or the political and cultural critique of "School of Hard Knocks." Unfortunately, few songs extend past an interesting stanza or two; instead, each cut just repeats the initial opening lines while devolving into a steady-rolling jam.
Too often, the result is like an underdeveloped photograph. The images could be interesting if brought into focus. But the process stops too early, leaving everything fuzzy and ultimately less than it should be.
CHECK THIS OUT: On "Behind the Ritual," the Irish bard suggests spiritual gains emerge from rituals, religious and otherwise, with the compelling groove taking his listener into the mystic once more.
-MICHAEL McCALL
Journal Sentinel:
It has sometimes seemed as if Van Morrison sprang from the womb with a lengthy list of complaints.
Now that he's 62, Van's years have caught up with his temperament. In that sense, the cranky, autumnal cast of his new album, "Keep It Simple," seems to suit Morrison perfectly.
"Keep It Simple" is the work of an artist in retreat both figuratively and literally. But it's a very stylish withdrawal.
Playing off Duke Ellington's "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," "Don't Go to Nightclubs Anymore" is about bowing out and swearing off the juice: "Alcohol was too big a price/ Listen, I just said no dice." It may be the saner choice, but at the end Van concedes, "I'm such a bore."
Both "End of the Land" and "Song of Home" are about retreating to the seashore to find peace and contentment.
Morrison grouses throughout about the foolishness and dysfunctions of the modern world, but there's also a sense that he's turning the fight over to younger warriors. "No Thing" despairs of changing anything and pretty much tosses in the towel: "I'm getting too tired to start all over again."
But the crabby-old-guy posture is offset by a streak of nostalgia and warmth. "Behind the Ritual" looks back on the drinking and partying of years gone by and sees a kind of spiritual education and evolution inside. There's a touch of defensiveness about "School of Hard Knocks," but it also basks in the security of having come through the fire: "I was educated by the school of hard knocks/ Who's gonna patronize me now?"
Whatever toll time has taken on Morrison's psyche, his tunecraft seems in fine shape. "Keep It Simple" deftly alternates brooding blues, tender love songs, front-porch country balladry and old-school soul singing.
It probably helps if the listener is of a certain age, but "Keep It Simple" is Morrison's best work in quite a few years, easily trumping the genre-hopping excursions into honky-tonk, skiffle and rockabilly.
-Dave Tianen
Irish Voice:
VAN Morrison was born in Belfast in 1945, the son of a shipyard worker who collected American blues and jazz records.
According to his press kit that accompanies his new CD, Keep it Simple (Lost Highway Records), Van grew up listening to the music of Muddy Waters, Mahalia Jackson, Lightnin’ Hopkins and John Lee Hooker. Surrounded by every kind of musical influence — country, blues, jazz, and folk — from 13 he was playing guitar, sax and harmonica with a series of local Irish showbands, skiffle and rock’n’roll groups. The rest, as they say, is history.
As he reaches the winter period of both his life and career, Morrison has been mining the blues and jazz records of his youth for inspiration. He started in earnest with the criminally underrated Too Long in Exile in 1993 and has struck creative gold in recent years with classic records like The Healing Game and the brilliant Back on Top in 1999.
On Keep it Simple Morrison seems to be taking the long view of life with lines like “had my rise/had my downfall/now I am going to rise again,” on “How Can a Poor Boy.” It’s a slow burner that opens the collection, and while you normally wouldn’t use “sassy” and “gospel” in the same sentence the church flavor reveals a playful side of the reclusive arranger that is thoroughly infectious.
Another nod to Van’s advancing years comes when he labels himself “a bore” and sings, “I’m not a legend in my own mind/I don’t need booze to unwind,” as a way of saying “no dice” to booze on the crotchety blues of “Don’t Go to Nightclubs Anymore.”
He does divert from these mortal matters to get in touch with his inner mojo on the soul ditty “That’s Entrainment.” No, that’s not a typo, and who knew this was a word? I thought it was spelled wrong, but I actually found out that entrainment means “to carry along (a dissimilar substance, as drops of liquid) during a given process, as evaporation or distillation.
Not sure how lyrics like “making me holler when you come around” and “shaking your money maker” has to do with this process. Then again, soul is about feeling, and this guy has soul to burn. Making sense in the song is optional.
With the exception of a few playful diversions like The Skiffle Sessions and a couple of country albums thrown in for good measure, Van’s recent collections are starting to sound like one blues shuffle running into the other when you stack them alongside one another on your iPod.
Don’t get me wrong — I love the blues, and few people deliver it with more conviction than Van does. But after 15 years in the same garden, the soil might need some turning over to produce a more satisfying harvest.
Perhaps a disc of Depeche Mode or Megadeth covers to clean the ol’ palette might be in order? Or maybe not.
Van’s latter work has also been marred with complaints about being famous. On tracks like “Just Like Greta” and “They Sold Me Out” from his previous CD, Magic Time, he made it clear that he wanted to be left alone.
I wasn’t aware that this was a problem, Van! Paris Hilton and Britney’s see through dresses have the tabloids salivating, not you! It also comes off as being a tad indulgent to complain about fame when you have the nerve to charge a king’s ransom for a ticket at the WaMu Center here in Manhattan.
Without the fame, he would be slinging riffs for lunch money at a smaller venue like BB King’s. Deal with it, dude! Mercifully, he keeps that griping to a bare minimum on Keep it Simple.
Let’s talk about that legendary Celtic soul, since Van the Man single-handedly invented the genre. This was the guy who “rocked our gypsy soul” and took us “into the mystic” at a time when no Irish people thought we even had gypsy souls, for chrissakes!
As he gets older and his voice gets deeper, he barks more like a cranky grandfather than cooing like a caravan poet. This serves the blues well, but one misses that wide-eyed romantic of yesteryear after 15 years of non-stop grizzled groans.
Just when you think you will never get that old green magic out of this old codger, he floors you with the idealistic “Lover Come Back” over a weepy slide guitar. He talks of the “sound of the evening breeze calling you back to me.” His voice pleading, he hits all the right romantic notes that made him King of the Chick Flick Soundtrack to begin with.
Let’s hope he gives the bar band blues music a rest on his next release in favor of more lover talk like this!
Though the music on Keep it Simple is, well, simple, Morrison should get a big round of applause for lending his limelight to other musicians from Northern Ireland.
He will be headlining a Northern Irish showcase at the influential South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas this week. The showcase will feature Downpatrick’s the Answer, Armagh band In Case of Fire and Belfast’s Foy Vance, Oppenheimer and Driving By Night. This will be the first time Morrison has performed at the festival, and the concert will form part of a short tour in the U.S. to promote the new album.
As well as the various concerts taking place, the Northern Ireland Music Industry Commission will host a Belfast/Nashville Sister City showcase party, featuring Foy Vance, the Answer, Brian Houston and Eilidh Patterson and a number of Nashville artists including Beth Nielsen-Chapman. NIMIC will also host a New Music From Northern Ireland showcase party, featuring the Answer, In Case of Fire, Driving By Night and Oppenheimer.
Who knows? Van might mix it up with the young-uns at the festival and might surprise us next time around. Until then, he provides a simple yet forgettable reminder of top-notch songwriting on Keep It Simple.
-Mike Farragher
Vancouver Sun:
Van's back with his 33rd album, his first collection of all-new material in a decade. Never the happiest of souls, he looks brooding and morose on the cover, a vibe that carries over to the opening track, Poor Boy Blues, apparently a slag at critics whose cynicism doesn't allow them to "believe anything is true." He does seem to have a bit of a persecution complex - the title track starts off "they mocked me when I was singing this song" - but as the album progresses he lightens up musically and comes up with some really cool stuff, a uniquely Morrisonesque blend of soul, gospel, jazz, folk and even country (there's quite a bit of steel guitar). The best songs (Keep It Simple, That's Entrainment) are stripped down affairs when Van plays ukulele alongside the legendary guitarist Mick Green (of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates fame). His voice is aging well, and if the confessional song Don't Go to Nightclubs Anymore (which is about giving up drinking) is true, the 62-year-old probably has quite a bit of great records left in him.
-John Mackie
Victoria Times Colonist:
Van Morrison has been blowing minds consistently since the 1960s. But on Keep it Simple -- keep the title in mind -- the often irascible, always inspiring blues-soul powerhouse takes a little longer to flex his muscles.
His first collection of new material in three years is a low-key creeper built around another quality singing performance. Van the Man appears to be evaluating his life throughout this 11-song set, all of which he wrote and produced.
Morrison drops enough salt in its stew to satisfy longtime fans, but the native of Belfast, clearly in a reflective mood, rides a slow groove. His 33rd album touches upon country, blues and jazz, never once sounding uninspired, and is held together by his voice, which has never been better. Result? Simple, but effective.
-MIKE DEVLIN
Democrat & Chronicle:
When Morrison unexpectedly starts scatting, "Blah, blah, blah" on "Behind the Ritual," the final track of this album, it's like that old joke about someone who could have a hit record just by singing the phone book. Morrison hasn't had a hit in years, and probably couldn't care less if he did; maybe that's never been a part of his agenda, considering Morrison's 1968 magnum opus, Astral Weeks, doesn't have anything on it that seems to have been intended as a hit. Keep it Simple is not nearly as ambitious, as songs like "Don't Go to Nightclubs Anymore," suggest the 62-year-old legend doesn't "have no need to pretend" anymore. For the last decade or so, Morrison's merely been cranking out these easy-on-the-ears albums showcasing one of the greatest soul voices of all time.
— Jeff Spevak
Manchester Evening News:
THERE is no denying that Van The Man is a talented survivor and it’s great to get a new release, rather than rehashed material.
But, as anyone who has seen him live will testify, there are two Vans; there is the passionate performer, or the artist who seems to phone in his performance, minus the feeling required to make your hairs stand up on the back of your head.
Unfortunately, this is the latter. Morrison seems to hardly open his mouth here, resulting in unheard lyrics and an endless blahhhhhh sound coming out of his mouth. Pace is also a problem as opening track - How Can A Poor Boy seems to go on forever, sounding like one like whinge.
Each track just slowly shuffles by, with Van sounding more asleep with each track. As always his band sound on top form, his backing vocalists wake you up with their excellent harmonising. But the pity is that they perform with a man who sounds unconscious throughout.
Technically superb, then but the man himself sounds like he wants out, and even the most ardent fan is likely to share these sentiments.
-Glenn Meads
Boston Globe:
Van Morrison didn't become a rock 'n' soul icon by making things more complicated than necessary. Maybe he drifted pleasantly off into the mystic or loaded up on strings and horns on occasion, but the bedrock of his sound, that impassioned and judiciously used voice, kept the listener tethered to him. But on his latest album, "Keep it Simple," the Irish legend does just that with spacious arrangements and direct lyrics. Whether it's the single articulated electric guitar line that threads through the soul-flecked "School of Hard Knocks" or the hitching harmonica of the back-porch blues of "How Can a Poor Boy," there is nary a bit of clutter on this low-key charmer. Morrison sounds good singing about feeling bad on "No Thing." He pines for a lost love on "Lover Come Back." And he succinctly explains the reasons he "Don't Go to Nightclubs Anymore" (too much smoke and booze). Simplest of all is his breakdown of "Soul," a place that has nothing to do with skin color and everything to do with one's essence. Essentially, Morrison's still got it.
-Sarah Rodman
The Washington Times:
The craggy, weathered head of Van Morrison stares out defiantly, almost bleakly, from the cover of this new CD. Yet the album's title, "Keep It Simple," taken together with the photo, seems less like a folksy truism than an edict issuing from an angry god.
True to his word, Mr. Morrison keeps it simple on his latest offering, his first album consisting of all original songs since "Back on Top" in 1999. Like a lot of his late-career work, "Keep It Simple" trades in unadulterated genre music — here it's blues, gospel, country, rhythm-and-blues and especially soul.
The instrumentation and arrangement are standard issue: organ, backing female vocal and pedal-steel passages give the songs a soulful air. Mr. Morrison's tenor is the same as it ever was — honeyed with a gravely edge — and despite his 62 years, he can still holler when he needs to.
There's a smattering of autobiography here. "Don't Go to Nightclubs Anymore," a jazzy number that owes a great deal to a Duke Ellington standard with a similar title, is a frank and somewhat ponderous farewell to the lush life, with lyrics like, "I'm not a legend in my own mind/ I don't need booze to unwind." The songs "How Can a Poor Boy?" and "School of Hard Knocks" touch on the mercurial nature of fortune, appropriate for an artist whose popularity has been interrupted with occasional bouts of relative obscurity. The direct, injunctive nature of "Keep It Simple" is in keeping with Mr. Morrison's reputation as an artist who goes his own way.
To my mind, the most interesting track here is "Soul," a song about soul music that is equal parts definition and mission statement.
By way of comparison, if all a person knew about rock 'n roll were songs that extolled its virtues, chances are he would not hold the genre in high regard. (Consider Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'n Roll," "Rock 'n Roll is Here to Stay" by Danny and the Juniors, Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock 'n Roll" and the execrable Huey Lewis number, "The Heart of Rock 'n Roll").
As an example of its genre, Mr. Morrison's "Soul" fares better than these rock chestnuts, but it raises the question of how Mr. Morrison, on the strength of a career spanning five decades and dozens of albums, stacks up against male soul legends such as Marvin Gaye, Percy Sledge, Ray Charles, Curtis Mayfield, Ron Isley, Barry White, Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, and others.
In his manifesto, Mr. Morrison sings "Soul is what you've been through/ What's true for you/ Where you're going to/ What you're gonna do." If this is true, then I suppose Mr. Morrison's as soulful as he says he is, but to my mind he doesn't compare favorably to the all-time greats.
Still, devoted fans will find "Keep It Simple" to be as easy and comfortable as a pair of well-worn shoes.
-Adam Mazmanian
HeraldNet:
On the title track of Van Morrison's latest, "Keep It Simple," the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer comes off as a bit smug.
He knocks people who mocked him for singing songs that "told it like it was," noting that we "got to keep it simple nowadays." Quaint phrasing, that, and a little out of touch.
His new album lives up to its simple namesake. Filled with spare music, he genre hops between white-guy spirituals, jazz and blues, setting up scenarios to show how simple life can be.
At one point he sings, "Soul is not the color of your skin." It's hard to imagine his audience for the line. Is it made up of people who don't understand that but also enjoy acoustic folk? Do those people even exist?
It's not that platitudes can't work. Obviously, The Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" is as plain as it gets, and Van Morrison's own lyrics -- "Sometimes we give, and sometimes we won't," from a 2003 duet with Tom Jones, springs to mind -- build huge momentum.
Those lines, however, took off because the music itself soared. Here instead, we get Van the Man waxing poetic over a midtempo guitar and a sighing organ.
"Don't go to nightclubs anymore," he sings. "I'm such a bore."
I won't disagree.
-Andy Rathbun
The Phoenix:
You might call this the Van Morrison equivalent of Bob Dylan’s Modern Times, since both are low-key, blues-infused sets with suitably craggy vocals and no instrumental frills. On “How Can a Poor Boy,” Morrison even borrows Dylan’s recent trick of quoting and expanding on a familiar country-blues lyric. And as with the Dylan album, the emotional tone ranges from merely grumpy to profoundly world-weary. This is nothing new for Morrison, who began airing his gripes about the music industry on 1991’s Hymns to the Silence and has returned to that theme on every album since. There’s a heavier-than-usual dose of it here, and the mood doesn’t lift until the closing track: “Behind the Ritual” is the one semi-epic, and the one that harks back to the celebratory “Caravan” days. As the track ascends, he sings of “drinking that wine, making time, back in days gone by,” blurring the line between spiritual transcendence and just plain drunkenness. As recent Van Morrison albums go, there have been more diverse and more upbeat ones, even one with nastier rants. (Check 2003’s What’s Wrong With This Picture for all the above.) But the late-night mood and the closing lift make this a worthy addition to the catalogue.
-BRETT MILANO
Chicago Sun Times:
Who are the ideal buyers for the latest album by Van Morrison? First, there are the diehards who adore his voice, which remains entrancing even at age 62. Then there are those who want to pick up the latest studio effort before they see Van the Man on tour this year. Everyone else should consider buying this album only after they have acquired Morrison's handful of bona fide classics ("Astral Weeks," "Moondance," etc.), some of his strong, lesser-known works (like "Hymns to the Silence"), as well as compilations by two eccentrics who have collaborated with Morrison -- Mose Allison and Georgie Fame.
The prolific Morrison's latest effort is dominated by mid-tempo tunes, and it gets a bit sleepy at times. With so many brilliant Morrison titles in print, it's hard to recommend one that's merely strong. Still, for a listener who has never heard Morrison (if such a person older than age 13 exists), a track like "Song of Home" illustrates his poetic lyrics, his skills as an arranger and that world-famous voice. It would be accurate to say this disc sounds like, well, a recent Van Morrison album. The man digs his soul-meets-blues-meets-Celtic-meets-country-meets-jazz grooves.
Morrison penned all 11 tracks, and as a lyricist, he can be overly direct, or downright repetitious. In "Behind the Ritual," he sings the phrase "blah, blah, blah" continuously for 30 seconds. "Lover Come Back" contains about 40 variations of the phrase "come back." OK, Van, we get it. And we almost forgive you, because nobody but nobody can sing like you.
-Bobby Reed
Arab Times:
Forty years on, a new Van Morrison album is still welcome. “Keep It Simple” is his first collection of all-new material since 2005, and as the title hints, there’s not a lot of embellishment, just a kind of basic, rhythmic and melodic flow. “That’s Entrainment” is one of the better tunes, the title referring to Morrison’s word for hitting the sweet spot in a situation or performance. “How Can a Poor Boy” shows his streetwise side, with what sounds like a Hammond B-3 providing the muscle. “Don’t Go to Nightclubs Anymore,” a declaration of domestication, is either a brazen rewrite or affectionate tribute to Duke Ellington’s “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” The album is front-loaded with these relatively energetic tracks. Much of the rest is resigned, reflective and spiritually attuned, but not always keenly focused.
San Francisco Chronicle:
As Van Morrison's songwriting has gotten more and more literal in recent years, his songs have become increasingly inane, like the crabby complaints of a tired, rich old man. Of course, his gruff, soulful vocals and the smooth, sturdy craftsmanship of his
band prop up his latest album, as he sorts through a typical program mixing blues, old-fashioned R&B and even a little country. When he sings "Don't Go to Nightclubs Anymore"- apparently Morrison has stopped drinking - he is no doubt singing of his
current life. But when he sings "That's Entrainment," he is stepping out from behind the Wizard of Oz's curtain, and all we see is a cranky, balding, roly-poly bandleader out of touch with the magic that made him what he was in the first place.
-Joel Selvin
inthnews.co.uk:
In a nutshell…
Husky, slurred, simple yet honest.
What's it all about?
The ever-enduring crooner turns all TS Eliot on us with a collection of stripped-back, simple songs diverging how it feels to be reaching the twilight of life. Yet Van Morrison keeps all the controlled energy of someone who still has something to pass on to the world.
A mix of jazz, folk, blues, country and soul, the album's one enduring constant is in its title: the acceptance that less is more and that with restraint true quality always prevails.
Who's it by?
A redundant question for anyone with ears they bother to use. After five decades of prolific and heart-felt melodies this is amazingly Van Morrison's 33rd studio album but is shows as much dedication as many new artist's debut.
His first LP of original material since 2005 it's also the first album penned solely by Van Morrison's own hand since Back On Top in 1999 and follows of the heels of last year's platinum selling Still On Top – The Greatest Hits.
As an example…
"Alcohol is too big a price/Listen, I just said no dice, when it comes to the man and the mice/Don't go to nightclubs no more."-Don't Go To Nightclubs Anymore
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
Van already has more than a handful of Grammys in the old trophy cabinet and he's been fifteen years in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but still he's coming back for more and expect Keep It Simple to be right up there come awards night.
So is it any good?
You have to try very to hard to find Van Morrison doing much wrong and even when he's not breaking new ground there's still generally enough going on to keep his music worth a listen.
On Keep It Simple he does more than just tow the line and even offers up one or two gems in the making – Lover Come Back and End Of The Land prove in particular why he's not yet disappeared into retirement.
There's a certain grace to Van's stripped-back band and as always he evokes images of sorrow and anguish but with such beauty and warmth that you can’t help but smile when you hear him.
It maybe that he has already reached his peak, but what Keep It Simple proves is that with the right combination of sensitivity and commitment to his art Van Morrison can still stay ahead the rest of the field and, what's more important, can do it with dignity.
8/10
-Mat Strowbridge
