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Whistle Stopper - Keep It Simple
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List Price: $13.98
Our Price: $7.30
Your Save: $ 6.68 ( 48% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Lost Highway
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0602517630789
Label: Lost Highway
Manufacturer: Lost Highway
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Lost Highway
Release Date: 2008-04-01
Studio: Lost Highway
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: One of my favorite Van Morrison albums EVER....
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Keep It Simple - the continuing greatness of Van Morrison
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Warmed Over
Comment: I've been a Van fan for many years and was excited that he was coming out with a new CD of new material. The material is new, but the themes are (unfortunately) recycled, warmed over, re-runs. The material may be new but it is far from fresh. I would have guessed/hoped that The Man would have been far beyond the (School of Hard Knocks) self-pity and "crucification" of years gone by, but he is evidently stuck there forevermore I suppose. Get over it Van.
His voice is still as good as ever and the tunes are easy listening, but best suited as background music. Listening to the lyrics is painful. He takes the "Keep it Simple" theme to an extreme. Lyrics like "You take my breath away...even on a cloudy day" and "alcohol was too big a price, that's why I said 'no dice'."
There are few bright spots on this CD. I don't recommend it if you are a Van fan.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Van...You've Done It Again
Comment: True to the title, Van has kept the sound and production simple and come up with an absolute cracker of an album. It's uncomplicated, melodic sound perfectly highlights one of the great voices of our time and the man just doesn't know how to write a bad song.
A must for any serious Van fan!
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Editorial Reviews:
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On April 1st, Lost Highway will proudly release Keep It Simple, the new album from Van Morrison. Keep It Simple is Morrison's first album of new material since 2005, and the first in several years in which he composed all 11 songs specifically for one album.
In the interim the legendary artist had a year that may be unprecedented for any living artist, having released three separate collections of his hits, with the latest, Still On Top entering the UK charts at #2 and selling platinum, proving the ongoing appetite for his unrivalled work.
His music has always incorporated the widely varied influences he heard and absorbed since his childhood days on the streets of Belfast- long before the bands of his youth and his initial breakthrough with the band he started early on- called "Them."
On Keep It Simple, Morrison honors all those varied influences - Ulster-Scots Celtic, Jazz, Folk, Blues, Country, Soul and Gospel - and an added surprise of a mighty Ukelele -most times melding them all together at once creating his unmistakable signature sound.
In some of these songs Morrison addresses the propaganda of the myth perpetrating rock music world. There is a definite theme that recurs throughout the album, especially in the title track.
In keeping with that idea, Keep It Simple does not boast the big horns or expected string arrangements of some of Morrison's previous work. What it does feature are gorgeous songs rich with emotion, depth and beauty.
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