In September 2017’s Roll With the Punches, Morrison muscles through R&B classics like Sam Cooke’s “Bring It on Home to Me” and Ruth Brown’s “Teardrops From My Eyes” alongside a few Morrison originals. Over the past 15 months, he’s released a string of albums that pay tribute to his own artistic roots the newest, just released, is titled The Prophet Speaks. Instead, Morrison has continued to create even while he flicks at the past. But Morrison has been there and done that: Astral Weeks got the deluxe-reissue treatment in 2015, and he reworked the record at the Hollywood Bowl for the album’s 40th anniversary in 2008. Many artists would use a milestone like this to embark on a victory lap: add some bonus tracks or some remastering polish to the already existing work, then head out on a tour featuring re-creations of the studio tracks. The golden anniversary of Morrison’s second album has been celebrated far and wide all year: retrospective appreciations have bloomed, and the delightful recent book Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968, by Ryan Walsh, connects the dots between that critically beloved release and the time Morrison spent in Boston a half-century ago. This November, Van Morrison celebrated the half-centennial of his album Astral Weeks, on which the Irish troubadour added his rousing high baritone to a watercolor landscape awash with genres so thoroughly blended it nearly rendered the idea of categorizing music obsolete.

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