Moondance

1	And It Stoned Me 4:30
2	Moondance 4:35
3	Crazy Love 2:34
4	Caravan 4:57
5	Into The Mystic 3:25
6	Come Running 2:30
7	These Dreams Of You 3:50
8	Brand New Day 5:09
9	Everyone 3:31
10	Glad Tidings 3:13

Barnes & Noble

It's easy to forget the strained lives that produced many of rock's masterpieces. Van Morrison was a onetime teen star -- his Belfast group Them had hits with songs like "Here Comes the Night" and "Gloria." In 1968, he had just produced ASTRAL WEEKS, a miasmic, transcendent, almost orchestral song cycle that wowed critics but confused audiences. On MOONDANCE, however, Morrison found a purer evocation of the music in his mind: an open, bluesy, affirming, and astonishingly tuneful series of songs on such elemental subjects as fishing and drinking ("And It Stoned Me"), love ("Crazy Love"), and the radio ("Turn it up!" he howls in the rocking "Caravan"). You also get the jazzy, unapologetically joyful "Moondance" and a uniquely beautiful, saxophone-tinged journey that wanders -- as Morrison puts it -- "Into the Mystic." Bill Wyman

All Music Guide

The yang to Astral Weeks' yin, the brilliant Moondance is every bit as much a classic as its predecessor; Van Morrison's first commercially successful solo effort, it retains the previous album's deeply spiritual thrust but transcends its bleak, cathartic intensity to instead explore themes of renewal and redemption. Light, soulful, and jazzy, Moondance opens with the sweetly nostalgic "And It Stoned Me," the song's pastoral imagery establishing the dominant lyrical motif recurring throughout the album -- virtually every track exults in natural wonder, whether it's the nocturnal magic celebrated by the title cut or the unlimited promise offered in "Brand New Day." At the heart of the record is "Caravan," an incantatory ode to the power of radio; equally stirring is the majestic "Into the Mystic," a song of such elemental beauty and grace as to stand as arguably the quintessential Morrison moment. Jason Ankeny