Van Morrison 26: Too Long In Exile

Those who thought the last, double album was too damn long will be only slightly relieved with this single disc, except that, at 77-plus minutes, it’s the equivalent of a two-record set. Too Long In Exile is another case of Van throwing all his ideas at one bucket, from the new songs complaining about the music business to the covers of jazz and blues standards and, most astonishingly, remakes of his own music. (Well, just one, but still.)

The sound for much of the album continues from the last one, with Georgie Fame, Candy Dulfer and the rest of his usual suspects. The title track is lyrically vague but catchy, followed by the paranoid “Bigtime Operators”, a subject he’s not about to abandon anytime soon. “Lonely Avenue” is a terrific version of the Ray Charles classic, up until where he sneers the word “you” approximately 73 times (we counted) in eight out of twelve bars. “Ball & Chain” is a backhanded compliment, nicely arranged with a developed melody and tossed-off lyrics. Other Van experts have pointed out that “In The Forest” takes its melody from “Orangefield” and its content from similar evocations of his imagination. Meanwhile, “Till We Get The Healing Done” takes the changes from “Oh The Warm Feeling”, but its attack is a little too relentless over eight minutes to affect any actual healing.

While it undoubtedly helped sell the album, there’s no other excuse for this tepid rendition of “Gloria”, outside a John Lee Hooker album wherein the blues legend sings a pile of songs with modern ones. Meanwhile, the CD booklet helpfully offers a transcription of all the words, to emphasize every spelling of the name. After a half-decent take of “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” (making, surprisingly, its first-ever appearance on any Van album), John Lee comes back to offer extemporaneous counterpoint to “Wasted Years”, which fades out while they’re still discussing them. And from here, the album actually gets better. “The Lonesome Road” and “Moody’s Mood For Love” are two excellent renditions of jazz standards, though we could do without the other singers taking a verse on the latter. “Close Enough For Jazz” is a sprightly instrumental featuring Van’s own deft acoustic guitar, while the equally toe-tapping “Before The World Was Made” sets a Yeats poem to somebody else’s music. The most interesting stretch on the album is reminiscent of the climax of Into The Music: here, he begins with “I’ll Take Care Of You” by Brook Benton, leads it via key change into an “Instrumental” with his own alto sax, then tells the band to go back to the first part, which he copyrights as “Tell Me What You Want”.

There’s an album’s worth of music here that would be considered good, even by his own standards. But putting “too long” in the title turns out to be somewhat ominous. Too Long In Exile instead becomes too much to take at once. Take all the covers—basically, “Lonely Avenue”, “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” and everything from “The Lonesome Road” on—and you have a pretty solid set. Here they prove how ordinary the rest of the songs are.

Van Morrison Too Long In Exile (1993)—3