Heavenly Combination : CHECK LIST****<i> Great Balls of Fire</i> ***<i> Good Vibrations</i> **<i> Maybe Baby</i> *<i> Running on Empty </i>

*** 1/2VAN MORRISON & THE CHIEFTAINS. “Irish Heartbeat.” Mercury. The Pogues having alerted the cognoscenti to the pleasures of traditional Irish music, this project matching mystical minstrel Morrison with Ireland’s best-loved purveyors of Irish folk, the Chieftains, may receive the attention it deserves. An instrumental sextet formed in the late ‘50s by pipe player Paddy Moloney, the Chieftains found the ideal vocalist in Morrison, who has the range and experience to segue from sprightly jigs to soulful ballads, not to mention a genuine love of this music.

Including eight Irish standards and two recent Morrison compositions, the album is sprinkled with a bit too much fairy dust in spots, and occasionally veers dangerously close to sounding like a commercial for Irish Spring soap. For the most part, however, “Irish Heartbeat” moves with an engaging lilt, and two cuts--”My Lagan Love” and “She Moved Through the Fair”--are as breathtakingly beautiful as anything Morrison’s ever done. Like the poet William Butler Yeats, whom Morrison admires, the Belfast Cowboy brings such depth and feeling to his work that it takes on a grandeur that can only be described as religious. Both of the aforementioned cuts feature passages of Morrison’s heavenly scat-singing-in-tongues where his genius comes into full, glorious flower.