Every artist has their beginning, not all of them the brightest of beginnings. Van Morrison is one of those artists who didn’t have an explosive beginning. Blowin’ Your Mind!, Morrison’s debut solo album, is a hodgepodge of lazy R&B and rock n’ roll with a few solid tracks sprinkled in. While certainly not a hallmark of Morrison’s discography, Blowin’ Your Mind! presents a few notable tracks amidst a bog of unremarkable tracks.

The album begins off with one of the few aforementioned gems, the one Van Morrison song almost everyone can recognize – “Brown Eyed Girl.” An excellent start to the album, though it is not completely in line with the rest of the album’s aesthetic. After this, you get two dry blues numbers. The one saving grace of this bluesy pair is the lyrical content of “T.B. Sheets.” It exhibits the occasionally bizarre quality of Van Morrison’s writing, which redeems the lazy guitar parts and unimaginative keyboard bits. Following “T.B. Sheets” there’s a glimmer of hope in the fourth track, “Spanish Rose.” While the lyrics are not incredibly deep, the instrumentation is pleasant and can keep your attention. From there the band delivers two more solid tracks: “Goodbye Baby (Baby Goodbye)” and “Ro Ro Rosey.” Both contain excellent riffs and bouncing rhythms that stand out from the drudge that permeated most of the first couple tracks. The LP concludes with two decent tracks; “Who Drove the Red Sports Car” finds the right balance between slow and entertaining and “Midnight Special” tops everything off with a refined blues tune that’ll have you indefinitely bobbing your head with the cowbell.

So is this album good? Sure. Is the album superb, true Van-Morrison quality? By no means at all. There’s definitely promise in some of the album’s sound, but it ultimately serves as a template for the transcendent heights Van Morrison would reach with his future albums. Apart from that, it’s no surprise this album was buried deep in the Billboard charts upon its release in late 1967.