Though Astral Weeks usually gets the nod from critics, my heart's always gonna lie with Moondance. Has an album ever opened with three songs as utterly brilliant as "And It Stoned Me", "Moondance", and "Crazy Love"? Well, yeah, but not many. Then later on, you've got "Into The Mystic" and "Brand New Day" to look forward to. More structured and direct than its predecessor, it somehow feels just as loose and free. This is Van Morrison's 6th Symphony; like Beethoven's equivalent, it's fixated on the power of nature, but rather than merely sitting in awe, it finds spirituality and redemption in the most basic of things. The pinnacle of Van The Man's career, and maybe, of non-American soul in general.
