Van Morrison: The Prophet Speaks review – laid-back, old-school R&B

Caroline InternationalVan 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 conc