Van Morrison - Common One (1980)

For the second Friday in a row, some magnificently mellifluous Mark Isham - this time in a supporting role to the living legend that is Van Morrison, on possibly his most ambitious album ever.  Common One kickstarted a seven-year run of albums that were deeply spiritual, meditative and sometimes esoteric, even difficult to get in to - but never less than hugely rewarding.  It's fast becoming my favourite Van era, so may well be posting more.

Common One starts off with the slow, gentle Haunts Of Ancient Peace, ushered in with a plaintive Isham performance.  Following this are the epic fifteen and a half minutes of Summertime In England - seriously, how to even describe one of Van Morrison's greatest epic tracks of his whole career?  Just listen to these joyous evocations of Wordsworth, Coleridge, T. S. Eliot, William Blake, Yeats et al, as Morrison pursues his red-robed muse through the jazzy uptempo sections and heart-rending waltz time sections, and you will realise it ain't why, why, why, why, why, why (etc), it just is.

As a comedown from this lengthy transcendent journey, the album continues with three shorter, much more conventional songs.  The self-explanatory Satisfied, the mellow loveliness of Wild Honey and Spirit with its quiet-verse, uplifting chorus structure are all great tracks, but there's still one more epic to come.  The second fifteen-minute track on the album, and its perfect, meditative closer, is When Heart Is Open, a beautiful experiment in ambient formlessness.  Even more so than the earlier Saint Dominic's Preview, Common One largely stands or falls on the strength of the two longest tracks that dominate its running time, and for me they make it an indispensable classic.  It's an album that might take one or two goes to get its hooks into you, but once it does it'll never let go.

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