Morrison Album Hindered by a Glaring Weakness

PolyGram Records’ “The Best of Van Morrison” album has so much to recommend it that it’s a shame the album is marred with a glaring weakness: its timidity.

On the positive side, PolyGram has taken full advantage of the compact disc storage capacity by putting 20 songs--or 76 minutes of music--on the album. That’s two more songs than is found on the cassette version of the album and four more tracks than is available on the vinyl.

PolyGram has also wisely avoided the temptation of limiting the selections to the “best” of the Morrison recordings from its own vaults. Instead, the album contains tracks originally released in the U.S. by four labels.

By drawing from all phases of Morrison’s extraordinary career, the album--which also includes a booklet with the lyrics to all the songs--provides us with a handy over-view of the work of one of the most gifted and original singer-songwriters of the modern pop era.

The material ranges from Morrison’s early blues-accented rock through his more recent, spiritually-minded Celtic strains. Among the 20 tunes: “Gloria” (his 1965 hit with Them), “Brown Eyed Girl” (unfortunately, the “censored” 1967 single version), “Wild Night” (from 1971’s “Tupelo Honey” album) and “Whenever God Shines His Light” (from 1989’s “Avalon Sunset” album).

So what’s the problem?

As wonderful as the music is on “The Best of Van Morrison,” the album is too conservative. Morrison--after more than 25 years of great music--deserves more than this overview.

He is fully as worthy of a multiple-disc retrospective as the Allman Brothers and Eric Clapton, both of whom have been saluted by PolyGram with boxed CD sets.