Released not quite two years after Van the Man celebrated his golden jubilee, The Healing Game is the portrait of the artist as a Christian man that needs to patch up a few raw nerves and irritate a couple of longstanding old wounds. The record opens with the smooth, gospel-y, Book-of-Revelations elegy to salvation, “Rough God Goes Riding”, wherein the artist suggests that we’re probably all screwed if we’re not saved. So that’s nice. There’s also the usual complaint-against-the-man-filing on “This Weight” that we know and love Van for, though he does accede that rock and roll initially set him free before it crushed his spirit nearly completely. But it’s not all sturm and drang — Van has a lot of passion and curiosity left, as evidenced on tracks like “Fire In The Belly” and “Burning Ground”, which suggest that he still has work to do. So much the better for all of us.