1. And It Stoned Me

2. Moondance

3. Crazy Love

4. Caravan

5. Into The Mystic

6. Come Running

7. These Dreams Of You

8. Brand New Day

9. Everyone

10. Glad Tidings

All Music

The yang to Astral Weeks' yin, the brilliant Moondance is every bit as much a classic as its predecessor; Van Morrison's first commercially successful solo effort, it retains the previous album's deeply spiritual thrust but transcends its bleak, cathartic intensity to instead explore themes of renewal and redemption. Light, soulful, and jazzy, Moondance opens with the sweetly nostalgic "And It Stoned Me," the song's pastoral imagery establishing the dominant lyrical motif recurring throughout the album — virtually every track exults in natural wonder, whether it's the nocturnal magic celebrated by the title cut or the unlimited promise offered in "Brand New Day." At the heart of the record is "Caravan," an incantatory ode to the power of radio; equally stirring is the majestic "Into the Mystic," a song of such elemental beauty and grace as to stand as arguably the quintessential Morrison moment.

Adrian ’s Album Reviews

A change of pace, a change of tack. Has anyone noticed ( and i'm sure you have ) just how great this album sounds? Produced by Morrison himself and recorded with a variety of engineers and session guys - it just exudes warmth and groove. Warmth and groove, that's right! 'Astral Weeks' wasn't something you'd describe as 'groove' but 'Moondance' is. Just check out the title track for ample evidence. A jazzy rhythm is created by the bass and drums and half-way through it goes off gloriously for an instrumental break underpinned by this swinging Jazz rhythm. Growing up Van listened to Leadbelly and Duke Ellington, among many others. He had a great musical upbringing, you could say, and he puts it to good use. Whilst 'Astral Weeks' had lengthy songs rambling beautifully, 'Moondance' is a more concise album containing shorter songs with a more regular structure. Van sings and really sounds like he's enjoying himself. 'Moondance' is Summer compared to 'Astral Weeks' which could be said to be Autumn. Both are beautiful things. The first five or so songs here are all beautiful, glorious things. Check the release date right here. 1970. 'Moondance' appears so shortly after the masterpiece 'Astral Weeks' that you must just assume Van was onto something. Speaking of summer and warmth, 'Crazy Love' just exudes both. Laze, laze, lazy delicious instrumentation and a real mellow, beautiful vocal. We've got the up-tempo and very happy sounding 'Caravan' and the vaguely 'Astral Weeks' in structure mysticism of the glorious opening 'And It Stoned Me'. To close the first side, we've got 'Into The Mystic' which runs over a really nice bass line that repeats over and over as Van does his stuff. Great stuff it is, too.

Moving through the remainder of the album, the final five songs share the great fidelity and warmth of the first five songs. The playing is exemplary and these are still more than decent songs. Maybe a notch down from the first side, though. Just a notch down. 'Come Running' is a pretty simple song and a nice driving country/rocksong, almost. Not exactly country/rock - this isn't the Eagles by any stretch of even the wildest imagination. Love the piano parts, by the way. Adore the bass-line. A guy called John Klingberg played bass guitar on this album and did a fine job! 'These Dreams Of You' is a nice song that like 'Come Running' is very easy to listen to and get right away. 'Moondance' sold well enough to break into both the UK and US album charts, by the way. 'Astral Weeks' sold next to nothing at the time of its release, so this moving into simpler song forms was perhaps a necessary thing for Van to have done. Still, he does it well and the songs are pretty much all great songs. Ah, a real favourite of mine on here is the relaxed beautiful atmosphere of 'Brand New Day'. When Van sings the chorus and stretches out, repeats and stretches and sounds so perfect - it gets to me. The closing song caps everything off perfectly, a happy jaunty sounding tune called 'Glad Tidings' and it almost sounds like a follow-up to 'Brown Eyed Girl'. 'Moondance' is so different from 'Astral Weeks' yet still so very good that it really is admirable.