Van Morrison

Keep It Simple

(Exile)

2 1/2 Stars 

When you’re on your 33rd studio album, like Van Morrison is with Keep It Simple, a little wheel-spinning and water-treading is probably inevitable—and forgivable. The man made Astral Weeks, for crying out loud; let’s cut him a little slack. But he’s still pushing his luck with songs like “Soul” (“Soul is a feeling, feeling deep within/Soul is not the colour of your skin”) and sleepy blues workouts like “Don’t Go To Nightclubs Anymore” and “No Thing,” both of which are celebrations of Morrison’s own boringness.

“I felt I had something to say with these songs,” Morrison has claimed—that line even appears on a sticker affixed to the CD wrapper—but oddly, there’s not much urgency to the lyrics here. Nothing political, no particularly tempestuous emotions being expressed, just a lot of boilerplate Celtic-soul nostalgia about “going down to the end of the land” and “hearing the song of home.” 

Morrison does sort of sum up his artistic philosophy on “That’s Entrainment” (his term for “living in the moment”), and “Behind the Ritual” is a  genuine charmer, an evocation of Morrison’s days as a young singer, getting drunk and spinning out rhymes in the alley behind a club—over a simple ukulele riff, Morrison keeps swirling around three or four choice phrases, trying them in different combinations, getting lost in the words and the memories they evoke.

Morrison may be keeping it simple, but when his music works, it does so in ways too complicated for almost anyone to duplicate.

PAUL MATWYCHUK

She & Him

Volume One

(Merge)

3 1/2 Stars

Saucer-eyed gamine Zooey Deschanel has had memorable roles in films from Almost Famous to Elf without ever quite becoming a star; she is, however, the fantasy girlfriend of thousands of thirtysomething moviegoers. As if she weren’t adorable enough, she’s gone and recorded a charming album of retro-flavoured pop songs with M. Ward, writing most of the songs and performing them with an agreeably untrained singing voice that straddles ’60s Nashville and ’70s Laurel Canyon. The songs are deliberately old-fashioned, and many of them turn into mere pastiche—there’s even a Mills Brothers-style mouth-trumpet solo on “Change Is Hard.” But on the best tracks (like the infectious “Sweet Darlin’”), Deschanel’s heart-on-sleeve, malt shoppe-jukebox lyrics and her ear for well-crafted melodies make a winning package. It probably helps to picture her singing them, though—and it especially helps if you picture her winking saucily at you as she does so.

PAUL MATWYCHUK 

The Black Crowes

Warpaint

(Silver Arrow)

4 Stars

Who would have thought after their 1990 debut Shake Your Money Maker that The Black Crowes had 20 more years of honest-to-God rock ’n’ roll in them? The only thing Chris and Rich Robinson have in common is their biological compulsion to drop albums like 1992’s The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion or 1999’s By Your Side: sneer if you please, but sometimes you need a breather from noise rock and glitzy ringtone rap—and the Crowes’ intoxicating and inimitably cool Exile-era Stones/southern blues-rock strut is the perfect antidote. From the sweltering heat of the slide guitars in “God’s Got It” and the crush of “Walk Believer Walk” to the raw brilliance of ballads “Oh Josephine” and “Wounded Bird,” Warpaint screams the return of true rock masterminds. The album’s clincher, though, is the live-recorded “Evergreen”: southern comfort for these sad times when we the Crowes’ passion and perfection are in short supply.

MATT HUBERT 

The I Spies

In the Night

(independent)
4 Stars

Hook, hook, thump, thump. That’s the sound of The I Spies debut album, In the Night. But don’t think for a moment that these up-and-coming Toronto indie-poppers will leave you black and blue. On the contrary, The I Spies weave melodic tales of urban disappointment with undercurrents of unrelenting percussion, coloured with infectious bass and guitar rhythms set against a backdrop of textured synths. Each song plays like a snappy fits-in-your-pocket movie about the adventurous lives of the nocturnal demimonde. 

With slick numbers like “Sleepwalkers,” “To the City,” and “Blurring Dots/Fading Lines” in their arsenal, The I Spies feel like Ontario’s response to Victoria’s Hot Hot Heat, and are even more likely to be the next hot pop quartet north of the American border. But even if things don’t click for them commercially, they’re still undoubtedly some of the most intelligent agents to replicate the coveted clamour of ’80s Brit-rock. 

CHRIS LEWIS