It's paradoxical that "Astral Weeks", Van Morrison's best and most enduring album, should be unrepresentative of his general body of music; as is in fact that his reputation was not truly established until his second album for Warner Brothers, "Moondance", which set the course for a succession of records, generally excellent and sometimes more, in an R&B-cum-jazz mode that was markedly different from "Astral Weeks".

Of all subsequent albums, only his last, the almost forgotten but immensely underrated "Veedon Fleece" comes close to capturing the quietly obsessive quality of the first, its songs each like tender, curling snapshots….

Both ["Astral Weeks" and "Moondance"] were also notably inspired by Morrison's nostalgia for Ireland; there are echoes of "Cypress Avenue" and "Madame George" throughout "Veedon Fleece," which was written after Morrison returned to Ireland in 1973 after many years' absence. These albums, suffering and poetic, are pronouncedly Irish, with something of the sensibility of Liam O'Flaherty, and less "American" than the others in the sense of the geography of those lyrics….

There is also a paradox concerning Morrison's new album, "A Period Of Transition," which centres upon the question implicit in its title: if it's intended to be a bridge between "Veedon Fleece" and some other, unknown shore, why does its content recall the music made between "Moondance" and "Hard Nose The Highway," only a good deal inferior?

After my laudatory preamble, this is admittedly a brutal judgement; yet this lousily-titled record violates all the expectations aroused by listening again to "Veedon Fleece," just as it forces another question: what has happened to Morrison in the past three years?…

The musicianship and musical construction are unexciting, but so, largely, are the songs. Since all are seemingly held together by the choruses (frequently the title itself), whose repetition they are dependent upon not just for their effect but also for their actual length, Morrison would appear to have been lacking inspiration these past three years. To single out one song, "Heavy Connection" has not only been padded, but its lyric also hinges upon the particularly trite phrase "a real heavy connection," a handicap from which it never recovers…. "It Fills You Up," a song which seems to be in praise of music itself, is lyrically impoverished, but it rides along on its riffy instrumental and insistent vocal…. "The Eternal Kansas City" is a fine, if unspectacular, celebration of that city's esteemed place in jazz history, which it quirkily invokes with the repeated line "excuse me, do you know the way to Kansas City?" Of the songs on side two, the slow, moody "Cold Wind In August," which ends the album on a downbeat note, has a melancholy power and one good phrase, "I was putzin' through September in the rain"; but "Joyous Sound" and "Flamingos Fly," both uptempo, are not nearly as uplifting as their titles….

[Has Van Morrison ducked out], really for the first time in his career, by reacting against the reception for "Veedon Fleece" with a record as different again, on which he's tried drastically (in both senses) to simplify his music? "A Period Of Transition" merely keeps inviting questions. Like the blue-toned photography of Morrison, reminiscent of old bubblegum cards, that occupies the back sleeve, the final impression it leaves is oddly self-conscious. The answers, of course, are all with Morrison; but, as always, he's not talking.