The album's music blends folk, blues, jazz, and classical styles, signalling a radical departure from the sound of Morrison's previous pop hits, such as "Brown Eyed Girl" (1967).

Its standing eventually improved greatly, with praise given to Morrison's singing, arrangements and songwriting, and the album has been viewed as one of rock music's greatest and most important records (a reputation the singer himself has dismissed).

[5] Legally bound to Bang Records, Morrison was not only kept out of the studio, but also found himself unable to find performing work in New York as most clubs refrained from booking him, fearing reprisals.

First, Morrison had to write and submit to Web IV Music (Bert Berns's publishing company) three original compositions per month over the course of one year.

To this day, nobody recalls the name of this flautist, nor has he been identified on any of the surviving documentation; he does play flute on the released takes of "Beside You" and "Cyprus Avenue" but is not included in the album credits.

[28][32][33] The third and final session, in the evening on 15 October, produced four more recordings that completed the album — "The Way Young Lovers Do" "Sweet Thing", "Ballerina" and "Slim Slow Slider".

[44] According to Charlie Gillett, the album has meditative songs that combine themes of nostalgia, drama, and Morrison's personal mysticism and are performed in a blue-eyed soul style.

[45] The album embraces a form of symbolism that would eventually become a staple of Morrison's songs, equating earthly love and heaven, or as close as a living being can approach it.

Morrison and Davis's upright bass can be interpreted as the earth opposing Kay's percussion and the string arrangement representing heaven and with Berliner's lead acoustic guitar residing on a plane in between.

In the words of AllMusic: "Over the endlessly descending, circular progression, Morrison sings positive lyrics about nature and a romantic partner, seemingly beginning in the middle of a thought: 'And I will stroll the merry way.

'"[52] Paul Du Noyer wrote, "Sweet Thing puts the singer in a hazy, pastoral paradise where he wanders in 'gardens wet with rain', or counts the stars in his lover's eyes, and vows to 'never grow so old again' or 'read between the lines'.

The song is told from the point of view of an outsider watching from inside an automobile and getting tongue-tied as the refined school girl he fantasizes about appears and he imagines her a fine lady with "rainbow ribbons in her hair" in a carriage drawn by six white horses and "returning from a fair".

Brian Hinton describes it as there being "a Sinatra strut to Van's voice, a blues knowingness with Stax brass, and a string section which swirls where previously it drifted."

[58] Rolling Stone's album reviewer wrote: "The crowning touch is 'Madame George', a cryptic character study that may or may not be about an aging transvestite but that is certainly as heartbreaking a reverie as you will find in pop music."

[61] The oldest composition on Astral Weeks is "Ballerina", which Morrison composed in 1966 while still a member of Them, around the same time he first met his future wife, Janet.

Inspired by "a flash about an actress in an opera house appearing in a ballet" (according to Morrison), former Them guitarist Jim Armstrong recalls the band working on the song between engagements.

[citation needed] "Slim Slow Slider" is the only song on the album to not have string overdubs[63] and according to John Payne, Morrison had not played it live before.

"[65] According to Steve Turner, one of Van Morrison's biographers, Irish painter Cecil McCartney influenced the titling of Astral Weeks.

[68] The squared circle in the cover photo is described as portraying "the mystic symbol of the union of opposites; the sacred marriage of heaven and earth".

[70] In the American magazine Stereo Review, editor Peter Reilly panned it as a "free-verse mind bender of an album", plagued by nonsensical lyrics and incoherent singing from Morrison, especially on "Madame George".

He believed both the music and lyrics captured the spirit of Bob Dylan's 1967 album John Wesley Harding, while calling Astral Weeks a "unique and timeless" record.

[74] Melody Maker also called it one of the year's best records, featuring Morrison's "small harsh voice" backed by an attractive musical combo that "verges on genius" during "Madame George".

[70] Many factors afforded the record its strong reputation in rock criticism: its back story as a commercial underachiever and highly personal work for Morrison, its distinction from the rest of his discography, his artistic autonomy, the music's song cycle composition, the enigmatic lyrics and quality of seriousness and originality as perceived by mature rock audiences and writers.

[86] According to Rob Sheffield, it was Morrison's "most beautiful and intense album", the foundation for his "legend" and a work that continues to captivate musicians and listeners.

"[25] Colin Larkin credited Morrison for fully realizing his ambition to "create without pop's constraints" on Astral Weeks,[77] while AllMusic's William Ruhlmann said its reputation among critics was justified because "unlike any record before or since", it "encompasses the passion and tenderness that have always mixed in the best postwar popular music".

Like the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, Astral Weeks was perceived as a one-off whose critical standing allowed little discussion for other equally fascinating musical forays that followed.

[106] When Astral Weeks was voted the best Irish album of all time in 2009, Niall Stokes wrote in Hot Press, "It's an extraordinary work, packed with marvelously evocative songs that are rooted in Belfast but which deliver a powerful and lasting universal poetic resonance.

[110] In August 2010, director and choreographer, Jessica Wallenfels, staged a production in Portland, Oregon, of a rock opera/story ballet of Astral Weeks called Find me Beside You.

[111] In November 2008, Van Morrison performed two concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California playing the entire Astral Weeks album.

"[117] On 30 October 2015, the album remastered was reissued by Warner Bros. Records with four session bonus tracks, including the full-length versions of both "Ballerina" and "Slim Slow Slider".