NO one could accuse Morrison of not being a stayer.

It's 40 years since he started with Them, and not far short of that since he released the classic album Astral Weeks.

Through rich and more barren times, he has kept going, backing up his albums with frequent touring. His music is Celtic blues and soul and, over the decades, it has softened, while never losing that Morrison sound.

Magic Time is his 36th album, if that's not a risky statistic to put forward. At first the signs are hardly encouraging.

The cover is terrible and, look, there's a song called Keep Mediocrity At Bay, which could well be another of those Morrison moans. So the surprise is that Magic Time is a mellow and a happy album, mixing new compositions with three jazz standards, on which Morrison is clearly having fun, especially on the Sinatra-esque This Love Of Mine and the big-band blues of I'm Confessin'.

Morrison no longer breaks moulds but, approaching 60, is content to slip into one.

If Magic Time lacks the edge of 1996's The Healing Game - the last great Morrison album - there is much to like about this languid outing, which starts with the moonlit waltz of Stranded, then moves into Celtic New Year, a home-coming plea to a distant love.

Just Like Greta is a nicely stated request to be left alone on which Van is asking to be disconnected for a while, rather than whining for his rights, as he sometimes has.

Updated: 09:26 Thursday, May 19, 2005