Roll With the Punches feels like a spiritual sequel of sorts to Pay the Devil. Both albums see Van Morrison moving away from the “close enough for jazz” sound of his latter-day work to focus on a specific genre – in the former case country and in this case the blues. As with country, the blues works well to naturalise Van’s increases grouchiness while also depersonalising it beyond his own immediate gripes. Although he’s drawing on the past here, blues is also a genre, like country, that doesn’t really lend itself to sentimentality or nostalgia. Hence the terrific opening track, one of the few Van originals on the album, that sets itself against dwelling on the past and enjoins us to take the future in stride.
There’s a great deal to like about this album. Jeff Beck is on guitar and his trademark mellowness offsets some of the sharper edges of the blues, at times almost gravitating it back in the direction of Van’s 2010s lounginess. Van clearly appreciates Beck’s presence too, referring to him a couple of times by name. Roll With the Punches also contains a track that has been a long time coming in Van’s studio career – a spectacular cover of Sam Cooke’s “Bring it on Home to Me.” Cooke has long been a muse for Van and this is a both a deeply reverential and distinctive version of his classic anthem.
Still, Roll With the Punches isn’t quite as distinctive in its sound as Pay the Devil, partly because the focus isn’t nearly as tight. Despite the ostensible dedication to the blues, Van can’t help but drift between genres at this point in his career, and so the album is bookended by two very different spiritual songs – “Benediction,” which appeared in his late 90s collaborations with Georgie Fame, and “Transformation,” a track inspired by the Californian Christian Agape community that reminded me of Bob Dylan’s “Shooting Star.”
Interestingly, Van’s own compositions don’t disrupt the cohesion of the album in the same way – they hold up quite well against the blues classics, partly due to the continuity provided by Beck’s guitar and partly because Van himself has lived and breathed these standards for half a century now. Where the album does fall down is in its sheer familiarity – Van has now recorded some of these tracks on two or three separate releases. He’s starting to develop a semi-set repertoire even as he enters the most prolific period of his career, converging live and studio approaches in ways that can remove the surprise, if not the charm, of his output.