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| Keep It Simple | 
 enlarge | Artist: Van Morrison
Label: Lost Highway
Category: Music
List Price: $13.98
Buy New: $7.74
You Save: $6.24 (45%)
Buy New/Used from $6.35
Avg. Customer Rating:  (61 reviews)
Sales Rank: 130
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.4
MPN: 001065802
UPC: 602517630789
EAN: 0602517630789
ASIN: B0012QGP00
Release Date: April 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
He's back!! May 24, 2008
12 out of 18 found this review helpful
With his latest work, "Keep it Simple", Van is once again the man! I purchased his "Down the Road" CD several years ago and found it to be good, but somewhat uninspired, and all the songs start to sound the same. After resigning myself to the fact that his music would probably only be mediocre at this stage of his life I was VERY pleasantly surprised to find Van going back to his soulful roots with this new album. It has a retro yet fresh feeling to it with the incorporation of the female backing vocals and the organ. The songs are really moving like his early works were in the 70's. I also enjoy the lyrics in these songs as he sees life from the perspective of a man his age. I give him a lot of credit to put out a piece of work like this at this point in his career.... when the creative juices are usually dried up! "Keep It Simple" is a work of art kept simple. I would totally recommend buying this if you're a Van fan!
Surprisingly brilliant May 24, 2008
12 out of 24 found this review helpful
On first listen I was disappointed at the opening numbers--seemingly throw-away songs that reminded me of Van as his most uninspiring moments. Some of your are already getting ready to click and comment on this reviewer's cluelessness, but let me finish. Van's best work is among the most soul-felt work an artist has ever produced, and he's left a very high bar for what the lover of his work wishes for. Somewhere into the cd, Van delivers: "Keep it Simple" is a fine cut, but "End of the Land" is just about as fine and blue-eyed-Belfast soul as anything else VM has ever offered to his listeners. "Behind the Ritual" is another gem that gives us Van in the zone that makes us forgive some of his less successful efforts. I started listening to the c.d. with those three cuts programmed first, and all of a sudden the lesser tracks started opening up. I'm not too picky--all I want is brilliance before I accept the more humble songs. If you're willing to make up your own track list, I think you'll start to see that this is one of the cd's worthy of the artist who gave the world some of the best music in the last 45 years. Thank you Van. Thank you.
 One of my favorite Van Morrison albums EVER.... May 17, 2008
5 out of 10 found this review helpful
I am a major Van Morrison fan. I have many CD's by this great man. Moondance, Astral Weeks, Common One, Tupelo Honey, Too Long in Exile, and Hymns to the Silence for starters. I would love to collect all the albums he's ever done. I decided to buy this one because my intuition said "get it now". So I bought it a week or so after it came out. It's one of my top five Van Morrison CD's.
I knew I would like this album, but I just don't like it, I REALLY love this album. I think it's one of Van's best albums ever. It's immensely soulful, gentle, moving, spiritual, and quite uplifting. It's also spare (for a Van album). In other words, Van is keeping it simple (though not simplistic). There are a few songs when Van complains about the machinations of the music business (School of Hard Knocks, for example), but the lyrics of this song and others don't detract from the overall beauty of the album. This album contains two of my favorite Van songs ever in That's Entrainment and Behind the Ritual. They're both so simple in their instrumentation, yet work so beautiful in their own unique ways. As for Van's "blah blah blah" chorus on Ritual (which some reviewers have complained about), it doesn't bother me. Van repeats phrases like that for effect his whole career, and it works wonderfully here.
The instrumentation is wonderful. Van plays a beautiful saxophone here. On many past albums, his playing was off in the background with other sax players. On this album, he's the only saxophone player. The organ playing is superlative as usual (by John Allair). And Van's voice sounds as deep and as majestic as it did on Astral Weeks a mere 40 years ago. This album shoots through you like a gentle, forgiving breeze. This is one of Van's most beautiful albums ever.
 Disappointed May 16, 2008
4 out of 15 found this review helpful
I eagerly awaited delivery of the new Van Morrison CD, "Keep it Simple," only to be disappointed from the first listen. The second and third listens were no different. From the reviews I had read in popular magazines, I was sure this CD would be as good as his last "off the beaten track" group of songs. However, it seemed to me that he did this one for the almighty dollar. Too bad.
Keep It Simple - the continuing greatness of Van Morrison May 15, 2008
2 out of 11 found this review helpful
If you are a Van Morrisom fan you will enjoy this new CD. VM's ability to master a universe of musical genres is one of the things that makes his music both fresh and enduring.
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