There are almost as many sides to the Bard of Belfast as there are blades of grass in the Irish countryside. In the decades following his early-'60s debut with teenage skiffle sensation Them, Van Morrison immersed himself in R&B, Celtic story-song, rootsy Americana, classical Western literature and mythology, Christian iconology, and even a little rock and roll. He's been the pop-minded "Brown Eyed Girl" hit-maker, the meditative "Astral Weeks" sorcerer, the gritty "Gloria" soul man, the jazzy "Moondance" romancer, the bluesy foil to John Lee Hooker, and most recently the cowboy troubadour of Pay the Devil. The common thread through Morrison's career has been his inimitably soulful voice—gruff and aggressive at times, brassy and sweet at others—delivered with religious dedication to the spiritual power of music.

Out of the 30-plus Morrison albums, there's no better summation of his versatility than 1970's His Band and the Street Choir. Morrison was at an indulgent creative peak at the time, perhaps inflated by the glowing reviews he'd received for Moondance just months earlier, as well as that album's colossal commercial success. Compared to the swooning expanses and midnight jazz of his preceding albums, Street Choir is a structured, well-focused affair. It kicks off with one of his best-known hits, the obscenely catchy, horn-swinging, pop-rocking "Domino." Much of Morrison's music seems tailored for top-down highway cruising and "Domino" is the most Motown of them all. The other side of Morrison's R&B obsession is "I've Been Working," a dark and slinky electric blues groove that rides a funky guitar lick and woodblock percussion. The closing diptych "If I Ever Needed Someone" and "Street Choir" is a swaying, despondent farewell, the latter ending the album with gospel-like reverence, funereal horns, and scat vocals reminiscent of St. Dominic's Preview.

But the clincher comes in the middle of the album, hidden under the mysterious title "Virgo Clowns." The song is simply one of Morrison's best, an ecstatic love poem to someone he calls "funny face" (his then-wife and backup singer Janet Planet, maybe?), imploring her to "light up that golden smile, shake away all your misery and gloom." Warm oboe and mandolin bring to mind the drumless, acoustic instrumentation of "Astral Weeks" and Morrison's rapturous chant "Let your laughter fill the room" reaches its peak as the sound of hysterical laughter fades in and then out with the song. It's loose, natural, and one of the most joyous moments ever put on tape.