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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
INCLUDES ONE OF MY FAVOURITE TRACKS OF ALL TIME, 24 Jan 2008
This album is one of the greatest popular music albums of all time,and it includes a track that would certainly be on my list of Desert Island Discs,that's Coney Island.A trip on the coastline of Belfast,so well written you feel your being personally escorted by Van himself around his hometown.
Then theres the beautiful songs that have become Van classics,Have I Told You Lately That I Love You (still by far the best ever recording of this song)and These Are The Days (remember it in the Hugh Grant movie Nine Months,when he's walking around the room with his baby).This album still gets better everytime I put it on and should be in every collection.I'm still amazed by the structure and majasty of songs like When Will I Ever Learn To Live In God,just listen to the power of his lyrics here.Then theres the big hit he had with Cliff Richard, Wherever God Shines His Light.Oh I could go on and on but it really comes down to one thing this is an absolutely fabulous release and should not be missed by anyone this time around.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Great Underrated, 11 April 2008
In some ways "Avalon Sunset" is an odd album.This might have to something to do with the thread of religiosity which runs through it. There is also the variety of styles - New Age sound washes, Irish whimsy, the soppy and sentimental, and straight down-to-earth blues and soul.
The first song "Whenever God Shines His Light" is a duet with Cliff Richard. An out-and-out pop song, OK but slightly out of place. From this to "Contacting My Angel". I'm not so keen on this. It seems to have strayed in from "Inarticulate Speech of the Heart", without doubt the direst album Van Morrison ever made. "I'd Like to Write Another Song" is a spirited blues number, sung against blustering saxes and Georgie Fame's Hammond organ. Van sings like Joe Turner. No higher praise. The words were clearly barrel scraped - but it shows how to write a song when there is nothing to write about.
"Have I Told You Lately" is a very effective soppy number - much loved by, and played for, newlyweds at their wedding dance. "Coney Island" is spoken. In simple language he describes his experience and feelings on a day out in Ireland. It works. "I'm Tired Joey Boy" is out of the same mould. Simple, Irish folk song feel.
It's the last four songs that, for me, bring this album to near classic status. They all have their faults. Van was clearly metaphysical at the time he wrote the lyrics. But he is back into soul mood, and with the grain of his talent.
"When Will I Ever Learn to Live in God" opens up on bass and primitive acoustic guitar over piano chords. It's simple straight declamation from Van Morrison, but, in the same way as you hear the gospel choir in Aretha Franklin, you can hear the Irish preacher in him. In "Orangefield" we are still in Ireland. The lyric here is simpler - an expression of delight in his lover. The music's heaviness and bombast overwhelm the words. But we are properly in the world of soul here, sound separating from meaning. The female backing group seem out of the Staple Singers.
In "Daring Night" we are lovers looking at the stars and dreaming of infinity. The words don't matter much. Van's vocalising becomes increasingly improvisatory in rapid repetitions of "baby, baby", "lord of the dance", "squeeze me" towards a climax, diminishing to pianissimo, alongside vocal ejaculations "don't let go". Van's confident, in-your-face vocal and evident relish of the music sweeps all before it.
The final song, "These Are The Days", opens on a two-note rocking figure on piano, then guitar over accordion and cellos. Laid back vocal for a slow and heavily nostalgic song, looking back to the summers when he was young. God comes is as "the love of one magician turned the water into wine". Some of the best is towards the end, after the song is sung when he and the female backing group vocalise wordlessly - "na, na, na, na" - female wailing above him gospel fashion. Climax then out.
Why isn't it a classic?
All criticisms fall away before the Man. One of the great vocalists of the past fifty years
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great album, GREAT typo!, 22 Jan 2008
This album is Van at the peak of his 80s "lush" sound. Apart from the throwaway "I'd love to write another song", every track is great (I haven't heard the added tracks on this new re-issue, but even if they are awful, the album as it initially stood is a classic). After this record, Van made another of his frequent shifts in musical direction, and never attempted this sort of highly produced (but passionate), string enhanced set again. There is a lot of nostalgia here, including the spoken word "Coney Island" and the beautiful "Orangefield". Of course there are the hits "When Will I Learn to Live in God" and "Whenever God Shines His Light", and the standard later made famous by Rod Stewart "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You".
What really prompted me to write this review is the track list as it now stands. It may be fixed by the time you read this, but for now, Amazon lists track 2 as "Contacting My Agent" instead of "Contacting My Angel". Longtime Van fans will feel this is an apt Freudian slip for the kind of phoning-it-in concerts Van does now as compared to the shows from the Avalon Sunset era.
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