Van MorrisonMain Stage, Electric Picnic\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Van Morrison<\/a>\u2019s final day of being 80, but Belfast\u2019s finest is not ready to celebrate his birthday just yet. The iconic singer and songwriter is famous for his onstage unpredictability \u2013 gruff, taciturn and abrupt, on a good day \u2013 and before his midafternoon performance on the Main Stage at Electric Picnic<\/a> on Sunday his imminent arrival feels like Irish festival weather: highly unpredictable, with a chance of thunder.<\/p>\n And still the faithful arrive: young, old, huddled in raincoats, gathered in reverent swells, one man finishing off a Cornetto, many wondering which version of Morrison we\u2019ll get and whether there\u2019s a chance he\u2019ll slip his biggest hits into his hour-long set. Is Moondance an option? Jackie Wilson Said? Into the Mystic?<\/p>\n Question asked, question answered from the get-go. Introduced by his wingman \u2013 he has eight backing musicians on stage \u2013 Morrison wastes no time in delivering a jazzy, low-key version of Into the Mystic before segueing effortlessly into Kidney Stew Blues, from his recent LP Somebody Tried to Sell Me a Bridge, his 48th studio album and his seventh in the 2020s. <\/p>\n Some of the crowd clap along as the groove kicks in: lively, upbeat and warm. Morrison is in mirrored aviators with a blue fedora and matching blue suit; his band are in smart, subtle black. <\/p>\n Alternating between saxophone and tambourine, he effortlessly moves from one song to the next, flipping back and forth through the decades, sometimes into head-scratching obscurity, sometimes into anthems for the ages. <\/p>\n Then \u2013 joy! \u2013 he kicks into Days Like This. If it\u2019s not bang on the original arrangement, it\u2019s very close. It feel like a reward for surviving the weekend\u2019s rain \u2013 which is back to pummel the crowd, having cleared off just minutes before Morrison took the stage. <\/p>\n A quarter of an hour into the set, the rain is slanting down so hard that the ink on your correspondent\u2019s paper runs and whipping out an iPhone to take notes looks like a path for certain destruction. <\/p>\n Morrison doesn\u2019t acknowledge the rain or the crowd. He doesn\u2019t talk at all, except for a couple of terse notes to his band.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a set that\u2019s not for the big screens or the TikTok purveyors \u2013 there are audience lulls, and there\u2019s plenty of chatter at times \u2013 but it\u2019s musically almost faultless, material arranged to get lost in, about the feel, not the look, about navigating a space beyond words. <\/p>\n Jackie Wilson Said (I\u2019m in Heaven When You Smile) elicits a thrilled yelp from the audience. Real Real Gone, from Enlightenment, Morrison\u2019s 1990 album, goes down even better. <\/p>\n Deluge aside, there\u2019s great comfort in a set like this, particularly at the end of the weekend; it\u2019d be a stretch to say Morrison is like an old snuggly blanket, but when he\u2019s good he\u2019s wonderful.<\/p>\n After he leaves on a rousing Gloria, some members of the crowd start singing Happy Birthday to him. They know full well he can\u2019t hear it. And maybe if he could he wouldn\u2019t care. But it\u2019s a thank you all the same.<\/p>\n For all the latest festival news, reviews<\/a> and more, download the Irish Times app<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Van MorrisonMain Stage, Electric Picnic\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606 It\u2019s Van Morrison\u2019s final day of being 80, but Belfast\u2019s finest is not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[12421,93,61,60,6495],"class_list":["post-609699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-electric-picnic","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-van-morrison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}