It's Too Late To Stop Now

Backed by the Caledonia Soul Orchestra's strings and horns, Van Morrison turned a 1973 tour into a document that treats a live show as its own art form rather than a promotional afterthought.

The band works as a single breathing organism, and Morrison rides it: on "Caravan" he keeps demanding the volume climb, and on "Listen to the Lion" he abandons words entirely for growls and moans until the song becomes pure exhalation. Nothing here is scrubbed or overdubbed into safety, so the covers of Bobby Bland and Ray Charles carry the same weight as his own writing — the roadhouse and the mystic sharing one stage. Even "Cyprus Avenue" ends with the title phrase shouted over a band that refuses to quit. That refusal is the record's whole logic: a man who found in performance something he never quite pinned down in a studio.