Personnel: Van Morrison (vocals, guitar, saxophone, piano); Arty McGlynn (acoustic guitar); Chris Mitchie (guitar); Davy Spillane (flute, Uillean pipes); Pee Wee Ellis (flute, saxophone, background vocals); Mark Isham (trumpet, synthesizer); John Allair (Fender Rhodes piano, organ); David Hayes (bass); Peter Van Hooke (drums, tambourine); Tom Donlinger (drums, percussion); Bianca Thornton, Pauline Lozano, Annie Stocking, Stephanie Douglass, Mihr Un Nisa Douglass (background vocals).

Engineers: Mick Glossup, Jim Stern, Tom Anderson.

Recorded at The Townhouse, London, England, The Record Plant & Harbour Sound, Sausalito, California, Tres Virgos, San Rafael, California, Lombard Sound Studios, Dublin, England.

Picking up where BEAUTIFUL VISION left off, this album is full of the Celtic mysticism, spiritual themes and atmospheric arrangements that characterized most of Morrison's '80s output. Again, Mark Isham is on hand to lend his support on synthesizer and trumpet for that delicate, almost-not-quite new agey touch. Van waxes philosophical, as is his wont, on such tunes as "River of Time," "Higher Than The World" and the title tune, and nobody ventures into the mystic with more success than Morrison. Held aloft by a female choir, Morrison's voice takes on a new air of maturity here. As his blues-trained voice cries out with emotions almost impossible to express with words, he relies on his own version of scat-singing; moaning, whispering, and murmuring incantatorially to articulate the SPEECH OF THE HEART.