It’s a terrible night for a moondance: On this risible and intermittently lovely 28-song collection, Van indulges in some of his most cherished paranoid theories and deepest-held grudges.
Five decades ago, an agitated 21-year-old Van Morrison recorded 31 original songs about missing royalty checks and ringworm, intended to fulfill the terms of what he judged to be an onerous record deal. Those 1967 recordings, known colloquially as the Contractual Obligation Session, were un-releasable by design: One track late in the running order is titled “Freaky If You Got This Far.” The Contractual Obligation Session was the first of many real and imagined revenges that Morrison would exact on the music industry over his storied career. The most recent of those revenges comes in the form of Latest Record Project Volume 1, a risible and intermittently lovely 28-song collection which, in its bonkers way, brings Morrison’s tumultuous career full circle.
If you’re new to Van, or at least blissfully unaware of his pathologies, it can be perplexing to understand why an individual who has made upwards of $90 million playing music could feel quite so aggrieved. The short version is that it appears hardwired: The dark strain of paranoia that runs through his work is the flip side of its meditative beauty. Take 1986’s pastoral masterpiece No Guru, No Method, No Teacher, which briefly interrupts its Proustian song cycle long enough to stipulate that “copycats ripped off my songs/Copycats ripped off my words/Copycats ripped off my melodies.” And by copycats he means: Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, Elvis Costello, U2, or just about anyone else who ever admired him and also set words to melody. It has seemingly never occurred to him to be, you know, flattered.
Even by his own standards, Van has been on a tear lately. After a career mostly spent steering clear of the political arena, Morrison was apparently radicalized by the coronavirus lockdowns, which, in the manner of privileged white men everywhere, he evidently perceived as a personal affront. This prompted the release of a handful of anti-lockdown songs each more ludicrous than the last and culminating with an Eric Clapton collaboration where the jokes write themselves. With his dander fully up, Van’s in no mood to mince words on Latest Record Project: Volume 1. He’s like Clint Eastwood’s character in Gran Torino, except his bête-noir is misleading government websites instead of murderous gangs.
The first track on Latest Project: Volume 1 is “Latest Record Project Volume 1,” and immediately it is impossible to know if all of this is a prank. “Have you got my/Latest/Record Project?” Van croons with insinuating casualness over a fetching jazzy stroll pitched somewhere between Frankie Avalon and go-fuck-yourself. The follow-up track doubles down on the light-jazz-dude-taking-no-shit-vibe with “Where Have All the Rebels Gone?” (Spoiler: He’s the only one left.)
As with all things Van, his genius consistently shines through irrespective of the asinine context. In addition to his outsized gifts as a songwriter and performer, Morrison’s uncanny ability as a bandleader and talent curator is perhaps his most overlooked asset. The group assembled for Latest Record Project: Volume 1 is no different in this regard: Regal horns and Hammond organs provide a decorous backdrop for a supple rhythm section as Van and his backing singers conjure frequently heaven-bound exertions. All the difficulties occur when the material is earthbound.
To be a genius is not the same as being a sophisticated political thinker, as we keep learning again and again, to the point of exhaustion. In his press materials for the LP, Van hilariously valorizes himself as the only living protest singer, by which it appears he means he is the only gazillionaire rock star to be a pandemic-denier besides Eric Clapton. For 28 tracks Van discusses hidden cabals of dangerous media types so frequently that it verges on a convoluted concept record. The seven-minute “Long Con” summarizes his strange host of anxieties: He’s a targeted individual, judges and government officials are after him, everyone is jealous. Who is behind the curtain? It’s a terrible night for a moondance.
For those of us who love Van, the concern is always that his madness will overtake his judgment and something will occur that truly desecrates his legacy. “They Own the Media” is a cringeworthy title adjacent to a common anti-Semitic dogwhistle that blessedly turns out to be just another mostly anodyne psycho-non-specific-paranoid-blues workout. Same with “Psychoanalyst’s Ball,” same with “Stop Bitching, Do Something,” and same with (not kidding) “Why Are You on Facebook?” This is the project of loving Van Morrison in the fraught year of 2021. He is the Belfast Cowboy, the dweller on the threshold, the king of the slipstream. He is also transparently insane, in insane times. Together we flow into the mystic.
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