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You can call Van Morrison lots of things, but predictable is not one of them -- and neither is chatty.
Last night, at his sold-out Air Canada Centre show, the 60-year-old Irish singer-songwriter-curmudgeon played very little from his latest album, this year's country-cover-heavy Pay The Devil, and said barely a word to his adoring audience.
He did, however, surprise and delight them by playing a number of old crowd-pleasers that he hadn't performed in ages.
Why does someone who can write so many beautiful songs insist on doing so many covers?
Why does someone with such a strong and beautiful voice rely so much on his backing singers?
He's not saying, so the best thing to do is sit back and take what you get -- knowing that will at least include a stellar band and a magnificent voice.
Last night, Morrison came out in a straw hat and a dark suit with a saxophone around his neck, which he used to quickly swing into the intro to All Work And No Play, from 2002's Down The Road album.
Backed by an 11-piece band that included pedal steel, fiddle, horns and three backing singers as well as keyboards and guitars, Morrison performed a decorous, laid-back and understated yet soulful program of songs from many stops on his long career.
Interestingly, despite the varied selection, nearly all of them were performed in musical styles from 50 years ago -- '50s jazz, '50s country, '50s rock 'n' roll or '50s soul.
For most of them, Morrison would sing a few verses and then turn things over to the band for a series of solos before winding things up.
Bright Side Of The Road, for instance, had a gentle country swing, with pedal steel, fiddle, keyboard and sax solos, while Stranded had a country-doo-wop flavour, with a lovely sax solo by Morrison himself, and St. James Infirmary went back even further, with a spooky and atmospheric '30s jazz feel. I Can't Stop Loving You and Big Blue Diamonds -- one of very few selections from the new album -- tapped Nashville country-pop without the raw emotionalism.
Crazy Love, the first big oldie of the night, was wonderful, until for some reason Morrison got a female backup singer to do the second verse; the same thing happened in the jazzy Moondance.
They played a few more gems like Cleaning Windows, Precious Time and Sometimes We Cry before thrilling the crowd with a beautiful, un-schmaltzy Have I Told You Lately and a string of rapturously received golden oldies including Wild Night, Brown-Eyed Girl -- featuring a rare acknowledgment of the audience in the form of encouraging them to sing the sha-la-la-la-las -- and, finally, Gloria.
So you could say it was a typically perplexing and pleasing show from the crusty old master of Celtic soul.
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The good Morrison showed up First, he is one of the finest male vocalists of his generation, a devil's brew of Celtic soul and unpredictability that has rendered him unique and unmatched in the arena of popular music in the past 50 years.
Second, and unfortunately, Morrison's reputation as a live performer is as volatile as his singing style. On any given day, he may be terse, uninterested, unsociable (he's been known to perform with his back to the audience) or even intoxicated. But on his good days, he's the most amazing performer imaginable, inspiring, engaging and eclectic. With Van Morrison, you pays your money and you takes your chances.
Tuesday night at the Air Canada Centre was, generally speaking, a worthwhile engagement. Backed by a tight, 10-piece ensemble, including three backup singers, that crowded around the singer as if in a rugby scrum, Morrison worked through a set of largely unfamiliar material that included just enough of the sixties and seventies hits to keep the audience satisfied. One often gets the feeling with Morrison that he performs largely for himself, and that the audience is free to take it or leave it. And with recent Morrison's albums exploring the unrelated genres of country music and skiffle, there were numerous examples of both peppered into Tuesday's set list.
Appearing in a large, white fedora with a saxophone hung around his neck, Morrison opened with a Cab Calloway-styled jump number, All Work and No Play, which, as was typical of the night's play list, was about the instrumental almost as much as it was the vocal. Morrison these days comes across as more of a band member than a singer, adding his vocal parts but then stepping back and allowing fiddle or trombone or steel guitar to take their turns in the spotlight.
After a couple more numbers that could well have been included in the recent soundtrack for A Prairie Home Companion, Morrison tapped into a more familiar vein, first with the pleasantly mellow Back On Top, followed shortly after by the hit single Crazy Love.
It was typical of Morrison on this evening that the familiar hit songs he did perform were handled in much the same way Bob Dylan handles his best-known songs in concert. Dylan has been known to mutate his numbers to the point where they are almost unrecognizable, and while Morrison doesn't quite go that far, he does put unique spins on his songs, obviously in an attempt to breathe new life into them. Thus, Crazy Love was done as a duet, with one of the (unintroduced) backup singers taking a soulful turn. Moondance was given a jazzy scat treatment that pushed it back into the 1940s (as was the seventies hit Wild Night), and Brown Eyed Girl was kind of slurred, suggesting that Morrison figures he has sung this one a few too many times.
But there were moments of transcendent beauty. Among the set's real highlights were a soulful take on the classic blues number St. James Infirmary, a slightly countrified version of the Ray Charles classic I Can't Stop Loving You, and the evening's surprise closer, a take on the rock classic Gloria, which was originally recorded by Morrison's sixties Belfast R&B group called Them.
Exactly 90 minutes after taking the stage, Morrison and company were gone. The lights came up quickly, and recorded music informed us there was no hope of an encore. No worries, though. On this night, the audience got pretty much what it paid for. A solid, tightly structured sampler of the Best of Morrison. Given what might have happened, this has to be considered a success.