It's paradoxical that "Astral Weeks", Van Morrison's best and most enduring album, should be unrepresentative of his general body of music; as is in fact that his reputation was not truly established until his second album for Warner Brothers, "Moondance", which set the course for a succession of records, generally excellent and sometimes more, in an R&B-cum-jazz mode that was markedly different from "Astral Weeks".

Of all subsequent albums, only his last, the almost forgotten but immensely underrated "Veedon Fleece" comes close to capturing the quietly obsessive quality of the first, its songs each like tender, curling snapshots….

Both ["Astral Weeks" and "Moondance"] were also notably inspired by Morrison's nostalgia for Ireland; there are echoes of "Cypress Avenue" and "Madame George" throughout "Veedon Fleece," which was written after Morrison returned to Ireland in 1973 after many years' absence. These albums, suffering and poetic, are pronouncedly Irish, with something...