After spending much of the 1990s expressing his bitterness with the modern world in albums like Hymns to the SilenceandDays Like This, Van Morrison sought to overcome his bile toward the end of the decade, declaring himselfBack on Topby 1999. (His fans concurred; the album was his highest-charting effort in more than 20 years and earned a gold record.) He then took an uncharacteristically long three years to make a new original album, though he produced two side projects, the liveSkiffle Sessions: Live in Belfast 1998andYou Win Again, a duet record withLinda Gail Lewis, in between. Down the Road is not bitter, but it does look to the past continually and with longing.