On the second track of his new album, Morrison sings, "I keep searching for the Philosopher's Stone." I wish he'd find the damn thing already. It's probably too much to ask that Morrison release his equivalent of Time Out Of Mind in 1999; while he doesn't ladle the spirituality on quite as thick as he did on some of his wayward albums of the '80s, he still seems stuck in a woeful groove that appears resistant to artistic regeneration.
Here, the Man sounds alternately cranky (raving on incomprehensibly about English rockabilly Vince Taylor on "Goin' Down Geneva"), embittered (castigating the music biz on the title cut, or unleashing his wrath upon the betrayals of friends on "The New Biography"), or new-age wacky (see the aforementioned "Philosopher's Stone"). The wishful thinking of its title to the contrary, this album is not going to win enough converts to push Morrison up the charts.
