Ван Моррисонның «Талқыны» альбомы

1978 album by Van Morrison

Wavelength is the tenth studio album by Northern Irish singer songwriter Van Morrison, and was released in the autumn of 1978. The album has a different musical sound from his previous albums, leaning towards a pop rock sound with prominent electric guitars and synthesizers. Wavelength was Morrison's best selling album at the time of the original release. Mick Glossop, Bobby Tench and Peter Bardens were given credit for special assistance in production. A remastered version of the album was released on 29 January 2008. It contains two bonus tracks, "Wavelength" and "Kingdom Hall", taken from the promotional album Van Morrison Live at the Roxy (1979), recorded on 26 November 1978.

Wavelength was recorded over several months at the Manor in Oxfordshire, England, and completed later at Shangri la studios in the United States. Morrison had brought together musicians that represented almost all phases of his musical history to date: Herbie Armstrong from his showband days in Belfast, Peter Bardens from Them, Garth Hudson from the Band and Peter Van Hooke who had worked with Morrison a few years earlier.

The songs on this album recall various stages of Morrison's life. "Kingdom Hall" harked back to his childhood in Belfast when he attended services with his mother, who at one time was a practising Jehovah's Witness. No studio version of the song is known to have been recorded during that period. "Hungry For Your Love" appeared in the hit movie An Officer and a Gentleman (1982); on it, Morrison plays electric piano accompanied by Herbie Armstrong's acoustic guitar.

In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone, Lester Bangs gave a lukewarm assessment and called Wavelength "a very nice record. I'm sure all the people at Warner Bros. are pleased with it. Ditto the DJs Still, though, it do confound how such a monumental talent can mire himself in such twaddle, fine as some of it may be." Melody Maker reviewed the album as evidence of Morrison's "drift into the American Dream." In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau referred to it as a good but not great album and called attention to side two, which he felt was "an evocative reinterpretation of Van's America fixation, but side one is nothing more (and nothing less) than class programming." In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine said "Wavelength essentially picks up where A Period of Transition left off, offering a focused, full bodied alternative to that record's warmly fuzzy lack of direction."