POP MUSIC REVIEW : Morrison Veers Down Path to Past

No one comes to a Van Morrison show expecting to hear the old stuff. “Moondance,” maybe, assuming he’s in a good mood, but not much else. This 25-year recording veteran’s idiosyncratic drummer tells him to walk to a new, obsessively spiritual beat, with as little looking back down the marching path as possible.

And so it seemed entirely in character when rock’s foremost white soul mystic announced during one of the many encores Thursday at the Universal Amphitheatre that his next number was “on my new album that’s just been released in the U.K. . . . It won’t be released here for another two weeks,” though his attention to release patterns and product did seem a little curious for such a notably unbusinesslike iconoclast.

What a kidder. That “new” album is “Van: The Best of Van Morrison,” and the song in question was his first hit “Gloria,” from his days with the British Invasion band Them. It’s one of the all-time great rowdy rock anthems, and a tune that no fan in his right mind would expect dignified Morrison to actually perform a quarter-century down the line.

Yet, for good measure, he even threw in a snatch of Them’s similarly dated “Baby Please Don’t Go.” Egged on all along the way by the enthusiasm of organist Georgie Fame, the Man wasn’t just in a good mood, he was positively playful and loose--setting aside the submerged religious fervor of his William Blake tendencies for something almost Pentecostal.

If he was willing to resurrect “Gloria” on this Maundy Thursday, there was still plenty of the Gloria in Excelcis Deo that’s dominated his last decade of work. The main body of the show spotlighted material ranging from the brooding, building spiritual ecstasy of “No Guru, No Method, No Teacher” to the irresistibly light, bouncy gospel-pop of “Whenever God Shines His Light.” It’s the warmth, love and rhythm in these sorts of tunes that causes a lot of folks who would otherwise never, ever consider religion to be seriously tempted by a life of spiritual devotion.

Yet Morrison has never left human love out of his Christian-mystic equation, and his plethora of original, honestly sexy material--much of which has him urging his earthy gal to pray with him--was very much evident. This night it was complemented by such unusual outside choices as Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman,” which never sounded half as compassionate as it did enveloped in Morrison’s voice and a typical horn-augmented arrangement, and Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” (the fourth and final encore, dedicated to Sarah Vaughan), which overcame its war-horse rep and actually became a genuinely soulful, syncopated pop-rock ballad under Morrison’s tutelage.

Fans can debate whether this was Morrison’s strongest touring group or not, and some apparently felt a bit put off by the brash cheerleading of bandleader Fame. Yet it seemed most probably Fame--a fellow fellow British Invasion R&B; fanatic--that inspired Morrison to dip so far back into the catalogue, to get so goofy in his call-and-response within the group, to have such a grand time on stage. Morrison has long been prone to liberally quote Blake, Donne and Burke (as in Solomon); here, more than ever, he really seemed to have found the balance.

Jazz/blues veteran Mose Allison, an influence on both Morrison and Fame, opened the show.