The Walrus - Music With Big Fuckin' Teeth!

10/24/2007

Astral Weeks: A perfect record for rainy mornings

The next time you wake up ahead of the sun, it's raining and there happens to be a small window of time before the day begins, listen to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. I would describe this album as an audible version of Van Gogh's 1889 painting "Wheat Fields in the Rain."

Music writer Lester Bangs called this album " a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend." Heavy, man.

My impression of this record isn't as dramatic as Mr. Bangs, rather I believe it to be a reflective album, one inspired out of a melancholic beautifully human hope. This isn't the kind of record I can listen to all the time but when it fits the mood, nothing else compares.

Amazon has copies of Astral Weeks for sale, this is a record you need to own.