Inarticulate Speech of the Heart

VAN MORRISON

Warner Bros.

This one's not a prized item in the Van canon, but its gentle, melodic flavor and emphasis on gauzy Celtic sounds — more pastel than his later collaborations with The Chieftains — make it a real charmer. Inarticulate Speech of the Heart is largely preoccupied with spiritualism, searching and healing, and features virtually none of Van's blue-eyed-soul bombast. Not for everyone, but shows a different side of the man.

This article appears in Jun 21-27, 2006.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...