Van Morrison
Somebody Tried To Sell Me A Bridge
(Orangefield Records)
★★☆☆☆

LAST year Van Morrison gave us one of his best albums in decades – the often sublime Remembering Now. Full of transcendent moments, it’s up there with his best post-70s work such as Poetic Champions Compose and No Guru, No Method, No Teacher.

Somebody Tried To Sell Me A Bridge is his rather quick follow-up — the 80-year old Northern Irish singer-songwriter performing a selection of Blues classics made famous by BB King, Buddy Guy, Leadbelly and others.

Assisted by Taj Mahal, Elvin Bishop and Guy himself, Van Morrison is clearly enjoying himself — check out Social Climbing Tree and Snatch It Back And Hold. But while his voice continues to be an instrument of wonder, for me there’s only so many relatively similar-sounding Blues numbers I can listen to in one sitting, and the 20 tracks here feels a bit excessive.

Tyler Ballgame
For The First Time, Again
(Rough Trade)
★★★★☆

MOVING from Rhode Island to Los Angeles, it seems Tyler Ballgame — real name Tyler Perry — quickly made a name for himself, with producers Ryan Pollie and Jonathan Rado (Miley Cyrus and Weyes Blood) approaching him to make a record.

Which brings us to his fabulous debut For The First Time, Again, full of classic torch songs. And, most notably, his extraordinary voice, crooning and soaring somewhere between Roy Orbison and Elvis.

The emotive title track, with its romantic refrain “I can’t wait to meet you for the first time, again” really hits hard, but there’s lots of other great tracks, including single I Believe In Love and the ’60s soul of Waiting So Long.

An enticing update: performing at the End Of The Road festival last summer, Ballgame mentioned he’d been writing songs with Belle & Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch.

Dry Cleaning
Secret Love
(4AD)
★★★☆☆

SOUTH London’s Dry Cleaning are now on their third studio album.

There’s still much to appreciate, though I get the sense the art school-originated band feel they’ve landed on something special, and relatively successful, so have decided to mine it until… when exactly? The Modus Operandi in question is frontwoman Florence Shaw’s talk singing over post-punk indie.

The press release references “early ’80s US punk and hardcore” which seems a stretch — for me any merits of the often catchy music (e.g. single Cruise Ship Designer) are overshadowed by Shaw’s deadpan vocal delivery and lines about contemporary culture and the more mundane aspects of life.

Extolling the benefits of some quiet time, Let Me Grow And You’ll See The Fruit is a standout: “No-one coming along with a video call or a survey or a dick pic or a loud bang.”