Poetic Champions Compose
| Van Morrison
Poetic Champions Compose
Northern Irish singer and songwriter Van Morrison released his seventeenth studio album—Poetic Champions Compose—in September of 1987 through Mercury Records. The album was well-liked by critics of the time, who generally viewed it as mood music. Morrison claimed that he produces his best work when he’s content and that artists don’t have to be in a state of despair to create amazing works.
Poetic Champions Compose was originally supposed to consist entirely of instrumental jazz before the singer changed his mind. He aimed to create an album that exudes a sense of optimism and calm, with many songs becoming powerful statements of Morrison’s spiritual priorities in his music. Read more about Van Morrison’s Poetic Champions Compose reviews here!
Critic Reviews
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All Music
The overly mellow atmosphere and Van's arch artiness may not make it universally appealing, yet this record is warmer, stronger than many of its predecessors, one of his highlights from the '80s.
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Rolling Stone
1987. Although it doesn’t soar as unexpectedly high as last year’s No Guru, No Method, No Teacher, Van Morrison’s Poetic Champions Compose is another worthy installment in his series of soulful, meditative explorations.
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Stereogum
2014. By the time of this 1987 release, the polymath musician Van Morrison had chosen the saxophone as his preferred instrument, which explains the evocative opening five-minute instrumental "Spanish Steps" -- a be-bop inspired gesture that wouldn't have sounded out of place on Wowee Zowee.
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Andresmusictalk
2017. Van Morrison followed his 1986 album No Guru, No Method, No Teacher with one of his best albums of the decade. And perhaps one of the grandest achievements of his career. This album found Van reaching back into the flavors that has made his music such a treasure and creating a musical tapestry that will stick right to your soul.
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Suncoast Van Fans
2014. In 1987 I ran across a rave review of Morrison's Poetic Champions Compose which described it as a Christian work. I immediately obtained a copy of this newly released album and I was amazed. It was still the Morrison sound that I remembered, except now I really liked what I was hearing.
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Alphoristic Album Reviews
The final product isn’t anything revolutionary – Poetic Champions Compose is one of Van Morrison’s smoothest, more mellow records, but it’s tuneful and tasteful.
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Scaruffi
Poetic Champions Compose (1987) pushes his obsessive personal odyssey through a maze of pantheistic mysticism through a catalog of intense folk phrases, permanently expanded through an emotional trance and unable to reach a climax of pathos
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Robert Christgau
His first interesting album in five years sounds best as a CD for the same reason it isn't all that interesting--in his current spiritual state, which could last until he rages against the dying of the light, he doesn't much care about interesting. He just wants to roll on, undulating from rhythmic hill to melodic dale.
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WordPress.com
Listening to Poetic Champions Compose, and later the two dozen or so other albums in his catalog, showed me just how good music can be (perhaps, especially when we turn off the radio).Music of this kind is so non-mainstream that it is almost like a secret, as Van himself is something of a secret.To discover music of this caliber, to understand and appreciate it, was to embark on a musical journey which I am still on to this day.
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The Great Albums
Easily Van’s best album since Beautiful Vision, this album boasts the same gorgeous production and sonic crispness of No Guru, No Method, No Teacher . . . . Even if “Someone Like You” were the only good song here, this disc would still be worth picking up; that everything else here is similarly appealing makes this one of Morrison’s most criminally underrated albums.
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