Unlike many of his 60s and 70s singer-songwriter peers, Van Morrison’s voice has grown even more resonant with age, becoming deeper and richer without losing any of its vital power. That makes him particularly adept at capturing the different modulations of old age, especially in his work of the last decade. Keep Me Singing moves between several different ways of looking at growing old, affirming the importance of continuing to sing for singing’s sake throughout all of them. Like Born to Sing: No Plan B, music here is about flow, buoyancy and momentum, rather than auteurism, paving the way for Van’s extraordinarily prolific late 2010s.

Perhaps the most original register on Keep Me Singing is its wintriness and sense of infirmity. It’s there on “Out in the Cold” but especially emphatic on “Memory Lane,” which sees Van alluding to shorterning winter nights, asking passersby for directions, and hoping for the power to continue singing. It echoes the brittle epilogic feeling of Keep It Simple, except that there’s a richer and more lustrous sense of winter here, a confidence that it is just one season in the cycle that continues to roll around, even in old age. Whereas Keep It Simple often seemed underdone, this is a fully-fledged statement.

At the same time, the address of Keep Me Singing is much broader than just one season. This may be one of Van’s most topographical albums, gathering in many different parts of his mythography, from Bangor to Tiburon. On “Goin’ Down to Bangor,” he relishes Belfast landmarks, most notably Napoleon’s Nose, whereas “In Tiburon” ends with him hypnotically repeating street names over and over again, in a distant echo of “Cypress Avenue.” These tracks belong, spiritually, with the contemplative vistas of San Francisco Bay that have filtered through Van’s oeuvre from “Almost Independence Day” to “So Quiet In Here.”

The album is also marked by pivots in a more resilient direction. Some of these are playful, muscular numbers, such as “The Pen is Mightier than the Sword,” which recalls the exquisite cadence of 2000s Bob Dylan. There’s also a restless sultriness that recalls the best of Van’s 80s work. It’s there on the title track, which plays like a loose sequel to “When Will I Ever Learn to Live in God” but it really flourishes on “Holy Guardian Angel,” the centrepiece of the album, and a throwback to Van’s most yearning moments: “I was born in the midnight/Long before the break of day/Well my restless mind starts to wander/Known it all of my days.”

Taken in its totality, restlessness is also the overarching tone of the album – a nice counterpoint to the complacency of Duets. Keep Me Singing may be a modest manifesto but it is a manifesto nonetheless – to keep singing, to keep searching, and keep yearning. The closing trio of tracks – “Goin’ Down to Bangor,” “Too Late” and the instrumental “Caledonia Swing” – gather all this energy into some of Van’s most energetic music in years. It’s a lovely gesture of continuity from a veteran musician, and compelling enough to have become his highest charting album in the US to date.