Astral Weeks by Van Morrison

Astral Weeks, Van Morrison's second album, came out on Warner Bros. in November 1968, and it's about as far from the jukebox bounce of "Brown Eyed Girl" as a man could travel in a year. After Bert Berns died, Warner picked up his contract and gave him three sessions at Century Sound Studios in New York that autumn, with Lewis Merenstein producing, and out came something that refuses to sit still: folk, blues, jazz and classical currents all running into one another.

The songs hang together like a cycle, Morrison's voice circling and repeating, reaching for the place where earthly love turns into something like heaven. "Madame George" and "Sweet Thing" unspool like stream-of-consciousness reveries, and the title track sets the whole dream spinning. Warner barely promoted it and it sold poorly at first, but its reputation grew and grew until it stood among the most revered records rock has produced.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.