Composition
The title song is about a nostalgic searching of the past in order to capture a magic moment almost lost in memory. "The Lion This Time" is a continuation over thirty years later of "Listen to the Lion" that first appeared on his album Saint Dominic's Preview. There is a nursery rhyme quality to it as with its predecessor and a delicate use of a classical string arrangement. Thom Jurek with Allmusic says: "The acoustic 'The Lion This Time' is one of the finest ballads Morrison has cut in decades. Period." "Gypsy In My Soul" is also reminiscent of a song "Gypsy" from Saint Dominic's Preview. "Just Like Greta" and "Stranded" have similar themes of being lost in an alien world with only oneself to rely on. "Celtic New Year" is reminiscent of Irish Heartbeat, an album with The Chieftains. An Allmusic review calls it "trademark Morrison; the long, loping, repetitive line that is his trademark fuels this one. It's carried by the interplay between Morrison's acoustic and Foggy Lyttle's electric guitar fills, and aided by Chieftain Paddy Moloney's whistle." "Carry On Regardless" is a singing list of "Carry On Films" that Morrison seemed to have a special fondness for. The title track, "Magic Time", uses the peculiar time signature 9/8, not used often in popular music.
Read more about this topic: Magic Time (Van Morrison album)
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“There is singularly nothing that makes a difference a difference in beginning and in the middle and in ending except that each generation has something different at which they are all looking. By this I mean so simply that anybody knows it that composition is the difference which makes each and all of them then different from other generations and this is what makes everything different otherwise they are all alike and everybody knows it because everybody says it.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The composition of a tragedy requires testicles.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)