Van Morrison’s fourth album of new material in just fifteen months, The Prophet Speaks blends the jazzy sound of his last two albums with the blues of Roll with the Punches. Once again, Van moves between covers and original compositions although the focus is more on the latter here. The same ensemble vibe remains, however, with Joey DeFrancesco continuing his work on trumpet and organ, to the point where this often feels like it’s cut from the same sessions as You’re Driving Me Crazy.

As on that album there are long instrumental interludes, many of which are used quite creatively. Most of the ensemble mirrors the sound of teardrops on the track of the same name. Later they mimic the rumble and whistle of a train on “Rollin’ and Tumblin” as does Van at the end of the song – one of several moments on The Prophet Speaks when he bends his voice in quirky directions. You can tell he’s singing to have fun and the sense of pleasure is contagious.

Where The Prophet Speaks differs a bit from its predecessors is in its return to spirituality. This takes two forms. On the one hand, there’s a gospel quality that is quite unusual in Van’s work, evident on the shouting backup voices of “Got to Go Where The Love Is” and the looser supporting vocalists of “Gotta Get You Off My Mind” the similar titles suggesting a newfound upbeat urgency. The resulting atmosphere of collectivity works in dissonant and interesting ways against the smoother jazz continuum of the album. While not strictly gospel, the buoyant confidence of “I Love The Life I Live” is part of the same strand of songs.

On the other hand, the last two tracks of the album, “Spirit Will Provide” and “The Prophet Speaks” mark a return to Van’s more introspective spiritualism. Meanwhile, the most striking track on the album also partakes of this spiritual quality but in a more indirect way. On “Ain’t Gonna Moan No More,” Van name checks iconic blues artists but moves beyond (or beneath) blues, digging into the spirituals that form part of its musical substrate. It’s one of Van’s best latter-day original compositions and has a Dylanesque cadence, a sense of being hypnotised by visions and recollections of the musical past.

The counterpoint to “Ain’t Gonna Roll No More” is “Rollin’ and Tumblin” – a track that Van has covered before but never quite as oddly and surreally as he has here. If the former track uses the blues as a springboard into the past then this cover feels futuristic, or at least retrofuturistic, like an iteration of the blues that never eventuated. Alongside these auteurist gestures, Van also has some wonderfully vulnerable and silly moments. I particularly liked “5am Greenwich Mean Time,” which consists of his half-baked thoughts as he climbs the hill to his local bus stop, hoping that he gets there on time.

One of the charming features of “5am Greenwich Mean Time” is the way that Van doesn’t allow the title phrase to quite rhyme with the rest of the chorus, suggesting a slightly senile and doddering old age. Yet there is another deflected rhyme on the album that gestures towards a different kind of change coming in Van’s career. On the opening track, “Gonna Send You Back to Where I Got You From,” Van accuses an old lover: “I know you cheated Tuesday ‘cos I caught you with that runt/Like all your lyin’ sisters you pull that kind of stunt.” For a moment it sounds like he’s going to drop the C-bomb for the second half of this rhyming couplet and in the looming violence of that ellipsis lies the germ of the most splenetic period of his career – his COVID-19 albums.