A Period of Transition - Reception

Reception

Greil Marcus, reviewing the album in Rolling Stone upon its release, offered a mostly negative appraisal: "Morrison made better music in '64 and '65 with Them, the first (and last?) great Irish rock & roll band;...There is a lot of neo-R&B huffing and puffing on A Period of Transition (from what to what?), but Morrison's performances rarely find a focus, almost never hit a groove...The key to the album's sluggishness is the dullness of the horn charts."

The Allmusic reviewer, Stephen Thomas Erlewine says the album is "warm, welcoming, infused with spirituality and humor. Still like any period of transition, this is somewhat tentative and uneven, with its best moments, being at best, minor masterpieces." Adrian Denning called it "a good little album" with "some earthy Van soul music on display".

Peter Knobler, reviewing the album in Crawdaddy, wrote: "People had started talking about Van Morrison in the past tense. In the three years since his last album release, Veedon Fleece, his presence had grown to become some vaguely attainable level of excellence it seemed no one, not even Morrison himself, could ever truly achieve....A Period of Transition is Van Morrison's comeback album and with it he steps from influential absentia directly back to the top."

Robert Christgau said in his review: "in general this is an unexciting record—but not definitively. It's full of the surprising touches...that signify talent putting out."

Biographer Steve Turner calls the album, "lethargic and uninspired" but says that perhaps it was the album Morrison needed to make after being largely absent from the music business for almost three years. (His only public performance during this time period was a highly acclaimed appearance on The Last Waltz with The Band in 1976.) Scott Floman was unimpressed calling it "the first truly skippable album of Van’s career thus far."