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Van Morrison, Down to Earth

"Please don't call me a sage/ I'm a songwriter," protests Van Morrison on his new album, "Days Like This" (Polydor). Since Morrison himself contributed to the confusion with some of his into-the-mystic moments, it's a little unfair of him to blame his listeners. Nonetheless, the Irish singer-songwriter manages to support his regular-guy claim with this unusually consistent album, his 25th, which emphasizes the earthier side of his characteristic mix of rhythm and blues, jazz and Celtic folk.

"There's no religion here today," sings Morrison, who has pursued plenty of religious options in the past, in "No Religion," a song that rejects the notion of overcoming human nature: "Go ahead, turn the other cheek/ But there's nobody on this planet that can ever be so meek." Though such song titles as "Melancholia" and "Underlying Depression" suggest that Morrison's demons have not abandoned him, he concentrates here on terrestrial concerns. The album both opens and closes with a love song, and the final "In the Afternoon" finds Morrison celebrating "love in the afternoon" as if he were back in the heady California of "Moondance."

The tone is set by two '50s ballads, "You Don't Know Me," a hit for both Jerry Vale and Ray Charles, and "I'll Never Be Free." (Both are duets with the singer's daughter Shana.) The album is dominated by a swinging horn section and the jazzy guitar of Ronnie Johnson, whose agility is demonstrated by his solos on such songs as "Raincheck." Even when Morrison steps onto the "Ancient Highway," a nine-minute passage that takes the singer past "a town called Paradise," "pagan streams" and "the sadness that Hank Williams knows," he doesn't lose his way. Though hardly as striking as his best work, "Days" is Morrison's most focused album in years; it may not win him many new fans, but it should please a lot of the old ones.

(To hear a free Sound Bite from this album, call Post-Haste at 202-334-9000 and press 8151.) Rod Stewart: A Spanner in the Works'

In his best-known songs, Rod Stewart has usually addressed erotic love -- evocatively in "Maggie May," crassly in "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" Increasingly, though, he's come to sing about a greater passion: the music that inspired him. "Windy Town," the first song on his new "A Spanner in the Works" (Warner Bros.), finds Stewart musing about being on tour. Later, he salutes "Muddy, Sam and Otis" (Waters, Cooke and Redding, of course) and covers Cooke's "Soothe Me." In "Lady Luck," Stewart croons that "the mandolins/ Kinda make you wonder how it might have been," a clear reference to the early-'70s "Mandolin Wind" period that produced his most durable music.

This is less personal than it might seem, however. He takes credit for penning "Purple Heather," a traditional folk tune that the Byrds properly titled "Wild Mountain Thyme" when they recorded it 30 years ago, but Stewart actually co-wrote only three of the album's 12 songs. The tour he recounts in "Windy Town" was Chris Rea's, and that reverie is followed by songs written by the Blue Nile's Paul Buchanan ("The Downtown Lights"), Tom Petty ("Leave Virginia Alone"), Bob Dylan ("Sweetheart Like You") and Tom Waits ("Hang On St. Christopher"). "Windy Town," "The Downtown Lights" and "Purple Heather" all make reference to Scotland, so perhaps the London-born Stewart thinks they're part of his heritage.

Produced by Trevor Horn, Bernard Edwards, Stewart and others, "Works" is consummate adult-rock. Though Stewart and Edwards are unafraid to open "Soothe Me" with a T. Rex riff, the album owes less to glitter-rock than to the high-gloss production style and epic balladry of Blue Nile. The result is slick but listenable. Those who don't pay too much attention to "Muddy, Sam and Otis" lines like "Angels needed a soul man/ For their celestial blues band/ And took him home" might even judge this one of Stewart's better post-'70s albums.