Van Morrison takes a break from pub-bore lectures with Moving on Skiffle

Having overshared in three and a half hours of anti-lockdown protests and green-inked screeds about government mind control on 2021’s Latest Record Project, Volume 1 and 2022’s What’s It Gonna Take?, Van Morrison takes a breather on his new release. Not in the sense of slackening his pace: his third album in as many years contains 23 tracks, proof of the 77-year-old’s undimmed productivity. But this time he has chosen to take a break from burdening us with pub-bore lectures about the evils of taxation and public health measures.

Moving on Skiffle is a tribute to the music that inspired him to pick up the songwriting cudgels as a Belfast teenager in the 1950s. Skiffle was the pre-rock ‘n’ roll scene in which US folk and blues were translated into a British idiom. While Parliament debated a 1955 bill for updating the British railways, skiffle bands bashed out tunes about exotic railroads like “Rock Island Line”. Lonnie Donegan’s hit with the song was a key inspiration for the young Morrison, whose own skiffle group was called The Sputniks.

He has paid tribute to this formative period before, including in The Skiffle Sessions — Live in Belfast 1998 with Donegan. The signature sound of the washboard turns up repeatedly in this new trip back to the source. But the music has a richer quality than the spindly tenacity of 1950s skiffle. Based on covers played by groups such as The Sputniks, the album summons an entire landscape of US popular music, the promised land for a generation of upstarts on the other side of the Atlantic.

“This Loving Light of Mine” is a retitled version of a gospel song with testifying vocals and Jerry Lee Lewis-style piano soloing. “Travelin’ Blues” careens through Jimmie Rodgers’ country-blues number with a harmonica blast like a train horn. “Green Rocky Road” stretches the folk original into an Astral Weeks reverie. Backed by doo-wop and gospel singers, Morrison moans, slurs and barks in his chesty-head voice, an inimitable tone. There’s a solitary lockdown gripe, “Gov Don’t Allow”, salvaged by a rollicking tempo and sense of humour.

★★★★☆

‘Moving on Skiffle’ is released by Virgin Music