Van Morrison's boundless lockdown fury spills over into latest works

Plenty of people have long viewed Van Morrison, one of the best songwriters in pop history, as an angry troublemaker.

But few expected that late in his career, Sir Van would supply anti-vaxxers and pandemic sceptics with so much ammunition.

The Northern Irish singer’s tirades against the restrictions imposed by the British government to contain the Covid-19 outbreak in a recent album were crude – and criticism of the 75-year-old Morrison, who is considered high risk due to his age, has been just as harsh.

Those criticisms echo when you listen to his latest works: Morrison delivers some lovely ballads and solid grooves – but although his voice remains impressive, he mainly still loves to complain.

It is hard to say whether this 42nd album will have a lasting effect, especially as some of the tracks trigger conspiracy theory fears with titles such as “Big Lie,” “Stop Bitching, Do Something,” “Dead Beat Saturday Night” or “They Own The Media.”

Respect is due though for “Latest Record Project: Volume 1,” an impressive feat even for an extremely hard-working artist like Morrison.

The Grammy winner has created 28 (!) mostly new songs, perfectly arranged mixtures of folk, rock, blues, soul, ’60s Beat and jazz that sound like a cross-section of his half-century career.

The album runs nearly 130 minutes, which is a little too much of a good thing after five studio albums in quick succession since his outstanding retirement work “Keep Me Singing” from 2016.

Musically speaking, this latest album is timeless and highly diverse, but some of the lyrics are heavy with resentment at the lockdown.

At the start, he muses wistfully, in “Where Have All The Rebels Gone?” before the lament of “Diabolic Pressure” and critique of social media in “Why Are You On Facebook?”

After a couple of milder records that were accompanied by friendly interviews – despite Morrison’s distrust of the media – there’s a lot of anger in “Latest Record Project,” with three anti-lockdown songs from autumn and a similarly provocative collaboration with Eric Clapton in “Stand And Deliver.”

“I’m not telling people what to do or think, the government is doing a great job of that already,” he writes on his website. “It’s about freedom of choice, I believe people should have the right to think for themselves.”

In the digital-only scattershot release of the songs “No More Lockdown” and “As I Walked Out” a few months ago, Morrison expressed his views even more powerfully: “No more taking our freedom/and our God-given rights/pretending it’s for our safety/when it’s really to enslave.”

That the government threatens freedom, lies to the people and enslaves them are strong charges, and he refers to the Berlin Wall in “Born To Be Free,” another protest song.

All the noise nearly drowns out his justified fear that the live music scene may never recover from the pandemic restrictions and that many concert halls may be closed forever.

One response sticks in the mind, however: Morrison critic David C. Thompson wrote that “apparently no one he knows has been impacted by the Coronavirus outbreak. Glad for him, because I lost a brother.”

Northern Ireland Health Minister Robin Swann, meanwhile, told Rolling Stone magazine: “We expected better from him.”

“Some of what he says is really dangerous. It could make people not take coronavirus seriously,” Swann said, adding that “it’s all bizarre and irresponsible.” Alluding to a famous Morrison record title from 1986, Swann added: “He’s no guru, no teacher.”

Of what drove him to make his latest album, which boasts all of the singer’s quality vocals and production artistry, Morrison says: “I’m moving away from what feels like the same songs, the same albums: this guy has done 500 songs, maybe more, so why is it always about the same ten? It’s trying to get out of that box.”

It’s a worthy aim, and fans are likely to forgive “Van The Man” for honourably failing to reach this in musical terms.

Less so his irritable rants.

Perhaps he will succeed in Volume 2. Hopefully his future songs won’t take on pandemic policies again.