Remembering Now: Van Morrison’s Testament of Light and Redemption
In the twilight of his eighth decade, Van Morrison, the bard of Belfast, the poet who walks in the footsteps of Yeats, has woven a tapestry of sound and soul that feels like a divine reckoning. Remembering Now, released on June 13, 2025, is no mere album—it is a sacred text, a blues-soaked, jazz-infused, soul-stirred gospel of the present moment. It is as if Morrison, at nearly 80, has reached into the embers of his past, gathered the sparks of his finest hours—those hallowed days of Common One, Beautiful Vision, Poetic Champions Compose—and kindled them into a fire that burns with the urgency of now. This is not just a return to form; it is a resurrection, a radiant act of remembrance that binds the eternal to the fleeting, the ancestral to the immediate.
To listen to Remembering Now is to stand at the crossroads of time, where the weight of decades meets the weightlessness of revelation. This, Morrison’s forty-seventh studio album, stretches across fourteen tracks and nearly seventy minutes—a sprawling pilgrimage that feels like a double offering from his classic era, yet pulses with a modern, almost prophetic vitality. There is no filler here, no hollow echoes; each note, each lyric, is hewn from a place of raw necessity, as though Morrison were channeling the voice of the divine through the grit of his weathered vocal cords. His voice—oh, that voice—carries the scars of time not as wounds but as badges of wisdom. It is a voice that does not conceal its cracks but sings through them, transforming age into depth, fragility into power. It consoles, it questions, it prays. As Morrison himself writes, “the concept of flow is beyond thought, beyond analysis”—and it is this unbridled surrender to the spirit of music that courses through the album like a river of light.
Remembering Now is a cathedral of sound, its architecture rooted in the blues, jazz, soul, and folk that have long been Morrison’s holy ground. Yet it is not a monument to nostalgia. Instead, it is a living testament, a bridge between the green fields of his youth and the radiant present he dares us to inhabit. The album’s spiritual core recalls the inarticulate speech of the heart that Morrison chased in Into the Music and Common One, but here it is refined, distilled into a clarity that feels both timeless and urgent. The lyrics, deceptively simple, paint vivid images—summer meadows bathed in golden light, the quiet awe of a dawn unbroken, the enduring flame of love that outlasts the years. These are not mere words but incantations, each syllable a brushstroke on a canvas of memory and wonder.
The opening track, Down to Joy, bursts forth like a sunrise after a long, shadowed winter. It is not the fleeting joy of youth but a sacred exultation, a hymn to the eternal pulse of life. Morrison’s voice soars above a shimmering tapestry of horns and strings, each note a ray of sunlight piercing the fog. This is joy as rebirth, joy as gratitude, joy as defiance against the weariness of the world. It sets the tone for what follows: a journey inward, a pilgrimage through the soul’s quiet places and radiant peaks.
Haven’t Lost My Sense of Wonder is a meditation in song, a call to rediscover the childlike awe that the clamor of modernity so often drowns. Morrison sings as a sage who has walked through valleys of shadow and emerged, not unscathed, but undaunted, his eyes still wide with the miracle of existence. The track hums with a gentle sanctity, its melody a mantra that invites us to see the world anew, to find the divine in the ordinary. In Cutting Corners, Morrison confronts the frailties of the human condition with a mystic’s grace. The warm lament of Seth Lakeman’s violin and the poetry of Don Black weave a delicate balance between confession and redemption, as though Morrison were laying bare his soul before an unseen altar, offering his imperfections as a prayer.
Once in a Lifetime Feelings is a sanctuary of intimacy, its melody a whispered supplication. Here, Morrison unveils the heart’s unguarded truths, singing of moments that linger like sacred relics in the cathedral of memory. It is not nostalgia but a celebration of the eternal now, a reminder that every fleeting emotion is a spark of the divine. Memories and Visions unfolds like a vast, contemplative landscape, its chords a dialogue with the infinite. Each note resonates with a reverence that transcends the material, inviting us to wade into the river of existence with open hearts. When the Rains Came falls like a benediction, its hypnotic cadence a ritual of cleansing and renewal. Morrison’s voice, weathered yet luminous, becomes an instrument of healing, washing away the shadows with a melody that feels like grace itself.
The title track, Remembering Now, is the album’s beating heart—a manifesto of presence, a call to dwell fully in the moment. Morrison sings with the authority of one who has faced the tempests of life and found peace in its eye. The song vibrates with a truth that is both personal and universal, its rhythm an echo of the soul’s quiet strength. And in Stretching Out, the album’s closing hymn, Morrison ascends to a state of cosmic communion. The track is an ecstatic dilation of time and space, a fusion of Belfast’s roots and the boundless expanse of the spirit. It is a prayer of reconciliation, a call to stretch toward the infinite and find peace in the embrace of the eternal.
Remembering Now is not merely an album; it is an experience, a sacred rite that demands to be felt as much as heard. It is the work of a man who has weathered the storms of eight decades and emerged with a light that burns brighter than ever. Morrison does not sing of the past to mourn it but to illuminate the present, to remind us that every note, every breath, is a prayer, a step toward the divine. This is music as salvation, as transformation, as love. It is a masterpiece—not of nostalgia, but of now. A call to remember, to live, to marvel. And in its sacred grooves, Van Morrison offers us nothing less than the gift of his soul, a beacon to guide us through the wilderness of our own.
Dario Greco
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