Some albums have a great opening run. Moondance has a great opening side. In fact, Side A is a contender for the greatest side of any album ever recorded. Every track is diamond-standard. Every song has its own character. Every one reveals a different shade of Van Morrison's genius. You finish one masterpiece and immediately another arrives. The title track has become one of the most overplayed songs in popular music, which can sometimes disguise how brilliant it actually is. My grammar school seemed determined to prove this. Every year, some poor souls would trot out Moondance at a talent show while a teacher clunked away at a piano, reducing one of the coolest recordings ever made to something resembling a hostage situation. The problem wasn't the song. The problem was that they weren't Van Morrison, and they certainly weren't backed by the incredibly tight musicians assembled here. And what musicians they are. The band on Moondance cook from start to finish. The groove is immaculate. The jazz influences, folk roots, soul feeling and rhythmic precision somehow feel effortless. It's an album where everyone seems to know exactly what the song requires and gives no more and no less. The influence of The Band hangs over the record too. They were hanging over everything at the time. The Basement Tapes changed the musical landscape before much of the world even heard them properly, and echoes of Robertson, Danko, Hudson and company can be heard throughout. Brand New Day explicitly references hearing The Band on the radio, and their earthy blend of roots music clearly helped point Morrison toward the territory he explores here. You can hear traces of their influence on everyone from Van Morrison to The Beatles' Let It Be period. The extraordinary thing is how consistent the album remains. Come Running is probably the closest thing to a lesser track, but that only highlights the ridiculous standard elsewhere. It's still a terrific song. Live, it absolutely flies. It simply doesn't quite rattle the marrow of your soul the way the album's masterpieces do. And there are masterpieces everywhere. Crazy Love is perhaps the most interesting case. Calling it underrated feels wrong because everyone who hears it loves it. It's almost universally adored. Yet somehow it doesn't occupy the same cultural space as Moondance, Into the Mystic or Caravan. Perhaps that's because it is so intimate, so gentle and so perfect that people take it for granted. It may not be underrated by listeners, but it is arguably underrepresented in the wider popular canon. Caravan, meanwhile, benefitted enormously from its appearance in The Last Waltz a few years later. It was already magnificent, but Scorsese's film turned it into one of Morrison's signature songs. Watching Van stalk the stage in that performance feels like witnessing somebody possessed by music itself. Then there's Into the Mystic. For Belfast people, it feels almost like a local anthem. Morrison's music often speaks of yearning, escape and home all at once, and nowhere is that combination more powerful than here. "Belfast City is the only place for me" comes from a different song entirely, yet somehow the spirit of Belfast runs through Into the Mystic as strongly as any explicit declaration of civic pride. By the album's closing stretch, something strange happens. You realise you've been listening to one great song after another for forty minutes and haven't encountered a single misstep. Everyone deserves special mention as perhaps the record's most overlooked track. Wes Anderson's use of it in The Royal Tenenbaums introduced it to a new audience, but it remains overshadowed by the giants surrounding it. As the final notes faded, I found myself feeling unexpectedly emotional. That's usually the sign you've encountered something special. Better yet, I came away still singing the songs. The melodies stick. The moods linger. The musicianship astonishes. And perhaps the most remarkable thing of all is that this record came from Belfast. A city that has produced many gifted artists, but very few works that can genuinely be called perfect. Moondance isn't merely Van Morrison's masterpiece. It's one of the greatest albums ever made.