The creative leap of Van Morrison's latest album, “Remembering Now” (2025), may have seemed to many to be a successful coup from an artist who in the last two decades has stood out for his tenacity and coherence, rather than for the incisiveness of his albeit dignified recording projects. The publication of “Somebody Tried To Sell Me A Bridge” arrives unexpectedly shortly after, confirming a state of grace and awareness that once again deserve proper applause.
Van The Man has returned to his roots with the maturity of an eighty-year-old and the energy of a twenty-year-old. Eighty minutes of visceral dedication to a genre, the blues, which has always been at the center of the many musical excursions that from “Astral Weeks” onwards have marked the history of the Northern Irish musician. The presence of three blues masters such as Elvin Bishop, Taj Mahal and Buddy Guy confirms Van Morrison's desire to put the shared passion for music at the center of these twenty songs, without unnecessary virtuosity and with sounds that renounce the embellishments of technology.
“Somebody Tried To Sell Me A Bridge” slides like an imaginary documentary on the glories of the blues with an in-depth and skilful rereading of many classics, just distracted by some unreleased songs functional to the staging of the project. In the manner of the unforgettable “Buena Vista Social Club”, Van Morrison's new album features a swarm of “old guys” (Elvin Bishop and Taj Mahal 83 years old, Van Morrison 81 and Buddy Guy 89) who not only revel in their first unforgettable love, but reinvent it and adapt it to a conceptual vision on the roadalternating vibrating honky tonky blues (“When It's Love Time” and “Play The Honky Tonks”) to superb interpretations of classics, such as a splendid “Madame Butterfly Blues” and the Muddy Waters superclassic “I'm Ready”. The emotional rate and quality of performance they avoid any purely retro drift.
There are quite a few variations on the theme of some classics. Van Morrison tries his hand at the sax in the pressing “Kidney Stew Blues”, reverses the perspective of the lively “Ain't That A Shame” by Fats Domino, dragging the melody into the arms of gospel-blues and transforms “Rock Me Baby” by BB King into the perfect terrain for his still remarkable interpretative and vocal qualities, just a few tones less than the twenty-three year old of “Astral Weeks”.
Which are unreleased like the excellent “Montecarlo Blues”, with an exemplary Van on the harmonica, and the title trackan acid rock-blues gospel, easily compares with the revisited classics and is a further source of pleasure and wonder. Even when the author ventures a fluid Latin rhythm in “Social Climbing Scene”, everything is in perfect balance.
David Hayes (bass), Larry Vann and Bobby Ruggiero (drums), Anthony Paule (electric guitar), Mitch Woods (piano), John Allair (Hammond organ and B3) complete the team of this new album by Van Morrison, an artist who has brilliantly passed the fourth age and who does not seem to have any intention of retreating.
02/13/2026
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
