Days Like This (1995)

Days Like This (1995)

Just as an exhausted Elvis Costello once wrote an album called Punch The Clock, perhaps no release in this artist’s catalog sounds quite so much as an antiseptic enterprise in making a “Van Morrison record” than 1995’s Days Like This. From the up-tempo opening track “This Could Be The Perfect Fit” to the admittedly lovely bayou jazz of “I’ll Never Be Free”, there is a sense of a great artist carefully marking the relevant boxes. Here we have Van as we might have to accept him for whatever future we enjoy together. If it is only the simple pleasures of “Days Like This”, then that’s a hell of a lot better then not having him at all.