Van Morrison - Brown Eyed Girl [2LP]

Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl rounds up the fiery 1967 New York sessions that launched his solo career, spread across a double LP Holland import.

Fresh from fronting Them, the young Belfast singer signed with producer Bert Berns at Bang Records and cut a batch of songs that would shadow him for decades. Berns wanted hits, and he got one, but Morrison was already chasing something wilder and more personal than a three-minute single could hold.

The title track is the obvious draw, a sunlit rush of transistor radios, stolen afternoons and that sha-la-la refrain everybody knows by heart. Stick around, though, because the rest of these four sides tell a stranger story. "T.B. Sheets" stretches into a harrowing, nearly ten-minute blues vigil at a sickbed, harmonica wailing over a slow, relentless groove, while early takes of "Madame George" and "Beside You" plant the seeds of what would bloom on Astral Weeks a year later.

An alternate take of the hit closes the set, a small gift for anyone who has worn the radio version thin and wants to hear it with fresh ears.

This is Van at his rawest: young, restless, a little dangerous and already sure of his voice, even when the business around him wasn't.