Album Review: The Prophet Speaks by Van Morrison

Instead of celebrating the 50th anniversary of the classic Astral Weeks, Van Morrison continues to deliver new work at an enviable pace. He's long sought to release more than a recording a year in order to keep pace with his intense work ethic. In 2016 he finagled a strategy to accomplish this when he signed separate yet simultaneous label deals allowing him that freedom.

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V an Morrison's 40th studio album comes packaged in the year's most unsettling cover: the great man with Archie Andrews - the ventriloquist's dummy from Educating Archie - sitting on his knee. What can it all mean? Morrison had a 2012 track called Educating Archie that complained about global elites, capitalism and the media, but this is an album of old-fashioned R&B - eight covers and six originals - that don't appear concerned with the state of the world. Perhaps there's a clue in the old show, which ran from 1950 to 1960, on the radio - a ventriloquism comedy on the radio! - and Morrison is hinting at the worth of the old as people rush to pursue the novel and the antic.

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