After two epic, extraordinarily brave, principled art-and-politics albums against the tyranny of the Covid lockdowns and the spineless betrayals by pop-music culture (Latest Record Project, Vol. 1 and What’s It Gonna Take?), Van Morrison moves forward with the new Accentuate the Positive. He isn’t leaving politics behind; this project shines with moral clarity and musical — spiritual — sustenance.

In these 29 tracks, Morrison covers pop songs from his youth, the foundation of his musical artistry — primarily 1950s rock and roll and the World War II music culture it sprang from. That’s the culture of rebirth, and though rebirth hasn’t happened yet, given the “continuing resolutions” of corrupted governments and corporations, Morrison lifts off with a hopeful rendition of “You Are My Sunshine,” that magnificently simple triumph over gloom, to demonstrate a pursuit of soul salvation.

There’s nothing schematic or pedantic about Accentuate the Positive. It’s a jam session, a party, a revival meeting. The title track rescues Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s1944 “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” through vocal harmonies and instrumental interplay that reconstructs the song’s advice. It’s almost scriptural:

You gotta ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive
E-lim-i-nate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mr. In-Between

You got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith, or pandemonium
Liable to walk upon the scene

Politicians and pundits don’t dare spread this gospel against wishy-washy futility (Christ’s “Because thou art lukewarm, . . . I will spue thee out of my mouth” admonition in Revelation 3:16). The steady tempo of Morrison’s performance is friendly as a church convocation. It rebuilds our broken hearts.

To underscore the political urgency of his previous free-speech releases, Morrison traces rock and roll’s secular and religious roots. “Two Hound Dogs” (about the dynamic synergy of rhythm and blues) recalls that moment when black and white music cultures mixed and were equally enjoyed despite social segregation.

That dazzling piano on “Flip Flop and Fly” could convince anyone to go back to those difficult good old days rather than accept progressivism. Morrison remembers the rock-and-roll era as celebratory, vivacious yet stabilizing. (The lyric “So many women I don’t know which way to jump” is a loving retort to Millennial gender wars.)

Such tunes as “When Will I Be Loved” and “Lonesome Train” are wondrous because their spiritual struggles transcend politics. On “Sea of Heartbreak,” a romantic duet, Van releases his inner lion: “Haowllllllll did I lose you… Strayyyeatttt to my rescue,” measuring today’s loneliness and desire. It’s uncanny how his rhythm changes on “Shakin All Over” turn it into drama, and a new time signature pushes “Red Rails in the Sunset” past melancholy.

Van knows he can’t top Little Richard’s wildness on “Lucille” — no one can — and so settles into the classic, comfortably. This segues profoundly into Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” perfect for a Van Morrison holy-roller spot: “You won’t do right to save your dog-gone soul,” folk-blues singer Taj Mahal joins in. And yet, they share the naughty line “One-eyed cat peeping in a seafood store.” Cardi B and her ilk, celebrating 50 years of hip-hop inferiority, know nothing about such subtlety or cultural heritage.

Morrison is very much about that heritage, but in this absolutely contemporary album, he faces the gulags begun by the globalist Bolsheviks and their Covid lockdowners and counters, using songs about liberty as ammunition.

Accentuate the Positive provides a pointedly lively answer to Bob Dylan’s sage Rough and Rowdy Ways. Look at Morrison’s album-cover art: a bright, multihued caprice compared with Dylan’s blurry, blues-bar photograph. Morrison’s cover envisions rock-and-roll ecstasy through a jitterbug dance that evokes Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers (a great dance troupe whose miraculous, whip-cracking movements were captured in the movies A Day at the Races and Hellzapoppin’). Accentuate the Positive is Morrison’s version of Dylan’s flippant, wide-ranging anthropological Nobel-laureate tome The Philosophy of Modern Song, but you can sing along and snap your fingers to this.