1973’s Hard Nose The Highway suffers somewhat unfairly in reputation, in the same way as the Rolling Stones’ Goat’s Head Soup. That is to say that it is a highly accomplished record with no shortage of highlights, but is nevertheless demonstrably less fully realized than the series of masterpieces that proceeded and followed it. Opening track “Snow In St. Anselmo” is an ambitious, half-successful collaboration with the Oakland Symphony Chamber Chorus, which hints broadly at the triumphal heights that would soon occur on Veedon Fleece. Meanwhile the title track is a lilting, free association that updates his previous “Cannonball”, and imbues it with a new kind of lyrical, lived-in poetry that would become a future trademark. Hard Nose The Highway is the kind of imperfect but still fascinating record that exists in every great career artist’s catalog. Van’s headed somewhere amazing on this road trip, he just hasn’t gotten all the way there yet.