Van Morrison "Astral Weeks" [1968]

Before shameless white men in the 70s vented their spleens to try and prove they've got as much soul as black singers, there was Van Morrison, a shameless white man who got his start in the 60s. But on "Astral Weeks," this Irish barking frog employs his fat voice not in service of the latest rock single about the newest girl he's banging, but in this weird stringy and reedy series of extended vignettes while reading from the journals he wrote while obviously stoned. He's backed up by a bunch of faceless jazzers who work their asses off trying to wring some dynamics out of Morrison's persistently pitchy emoting; I hope he paid them a lot of money, but none of them ever worked with him again so he probably didn't. It's just as well he went from "Astral Weeks" to a more typical front-man for a pop-soul outfit, though I'm sure the reason he could never pull off the Otis Redding red suit was because he'd look too much like a singing fire hydrant, which would have tripped out far too many people back in the day. Back to "Astral Weeks," there is plenty of supple improvisation between the players, actually. The violins and the upright bass tend to mesh well with the simple keyboard and vibe figures, especially when they bury that lame acoustic guitar. The only thing this album needs is a decent singer.