Having just read several reviews of Poetic Champions Compose, Van Morrison's glorious 1987 recording, I felt the rare compulsion to share my own thoughts and feelings about the album. This happens to be for me a very special record. It was, in fact, the very first Van Morrison album I ever heard. This may not sound terribly signifigant, but given my current status as a hugely devoted fan, I assure you it is. It happened one day some eight years ago while perusing the cassette rack at my local public library (fittingly enough), when I came across the album at hand. I can't tell you what made me decide to check it out, as I'd never even heard of the man, but upon listening to it later that evening, I was very glad I did. In fact, it made such an intense and immediate impact on me that I would soon be going out to get one Van album after another, each time amazed to find yet another uniquely great collection of songs. Van Morrison, for those of you not familiar, is a vocalist, musician, and songwriter of truly rare talent and substance. He is unmatched in the "pop" music world with regard to his fluency in a wide range of musical genres, his prolific output of almost an album a year for more than thirty years, and the passion and sincerity which he exudes through every song he writes. And to think that before I stumbled onto Van that fateful day, I thought I knew all there was to know about good music. Hardly. Listening to Poetic Champions Compose, and later the two dozen or so other albums in his catalog, showed me just how good music can be (perhaps, especially when we turn off the radio). Music of this kind is so non-mainstream that it is almost like a secret, as Van himself is something of a secret. To discover music of this caliber, to understand and appreciate it, was to embark on a musical journey which I am still on to this day. Now, you may have noticed that I haven't gone into a track-by-track dissertation of the record in an attempt to illustrate each of its beautiful elements and nuances, and I don't intend to. You see, that is the part of music reviews that I've always been a bit leery of. It's my belief that those things can't be expressed with words with any real effectiveness. Well, at least not by me. Even if I could describe to you, say, the graceful beauty of the piano in "Celtic Excavation", the tender lyrics of "Someone Like You", the inspiring religous overtones of "The Mystery", I wouldn't bother. After all, can I really expect you to fall in love with this album just as I did, or to fall in love with it at all? I don't think I can. All I can tell you for certain is, I did.

I was a wedding photographer for many years & always tried to keep in touch with the DJ's. If the wedding was with an evangelical couple, this CD was normally played during the reception. This is one of Van's more happier & lighter CD's with love songs galore. Comes right after the more profound "No Guru, No Method, No Teacher" which gives a more quasi-Buddhist/Christian direct mystic appeal. Van Morrison always had the singing voice though very emotional & spiritual, can at times be rather rough & therefore many don't care for his songs. But this CD would be a good starting place to get use to his singing voice & enjoy the many styles & subject matters. Van is in top form with this CD, playing his beloved sax at times with a light jazz feel. Other songs are either R&B or straight ballad music. Try the "Listen to Samples" section, each of the songs are very good, the most famous song from the CD "Someone Like You" is not programmed for you to listen to. I gave this CD a "5" because the whole CD is good all the way through. I like other Van Morison CD's better, but their number would be off the chart.

This is one of my favourite CD's and is a masterpiece right from the blues, almost jazz like, instrumentals of the opening and closing tracks through to the beautiful "Queen of the slipstream" and "Did ye get healed" with which you're probably already familiar. The whole album has a Sunday morning feel to it and is one that you will probably never tire of. My favourite track is the wonderful "Someone like You" which you may remember from such film soundtracks as Meg Ryan's "French Kiss" and John Candy's "Only the Lonely". Truly splendid stuff, if you only buy 1 CD this year, make it this one.

Van Morrison discs will always retain a professionalism of musicianship and at least one great song. Poetic Champions is one of the latter day Van's best albums because a) he isn't resorting to synthesizers and other "flavor-of-the-week" produciton values that have dated much of his '80s work that would otherwaise be timeless, b) lyrically and musically, he doesn't shy away from sentimentality, but there is a distinct lack of Van's trademark cynicism, and c) it's one of the few examples post-Into theMusic, that Van really does seem to get let the music lead him, rather than the other way around.

The album kicks off with the mellow-jazz lounge instrumental (!) "Spanish Steps". It's followed by one of the BEST all-time devotional songs "The Mystery". Other compositions of romance and renewed faith abound: "Queen of the Slipstream", "I Forgot That Love Existed", "Someone Like You". These songs are all excellent and are unabashed love songs, both joyous and joyful. The other great track here is the cover of the traditional "Motherless Children". Van does a wonderful, inspired reading of this song that has been covered from everyone from Blind Willie Johnson to Eric Clapton.

Of Van's post-1980 work, this and Avalon Sunset are absolute must-owns (Hymns to the Silence and The Healing Game are damn good too).

Although I had heard all of the songs on the radio: Brown Eyed Girl, Domino, Moondance, etc. I never truly listened to Van Morrison until I heard Poetic Champions Compose in the early 90's.

The revelation upon listening to this album was that Van Morrison is not just a collection of classic rock hits, but an accomplished and genius composer, lyricist and musician who is firmly planted in the traditions of blues, jazz, Irish folk, rock and in the case of this album and many of those that followed, gospel/spiritual.

This album is his most coherent and complete recording, in my opinion, since Astral Weeks. Like Astral Weeks, the album does not yield classic hits, but instead communicates a consistent mood and sentiment throughout. Poetic Champioins reveals a man beginning to see the light at the end of a spiritual search. His peace is fully realized in future albums such as Enlightenment, but in Poetic Champions you find an artist on the cusp of a tremendous discovery.

A beautiful record.