This is Van Morrison’s third new release in less than a year and, in the hands of anyone else, a late-career album with even a whiff of a jazz standard might smack of a cliché. (Unless, perhaps, we’re talking about Bob Dylan.) But Morrison is no stranger to jazz; after all, way back in 1968, his definitive classic Astral Weeks set the tone with a flourish thanks to “The Way Young Lovers Do”—just one of many instances where his command of the idiom shone through in style. That song, along with more than a half-dozen Morrison-penned chestnuts, forms the basis of You’re Driving Me Crazy , an ambitious collaboration with jazz organist and trumpeter Joey DeFrancesco, who has played with everyone from Miles Davis to Larry Coryell, and lends a vibrantly dexterous swing to the proceedings. “All Saints Day,” an upbeat number that featured Georgie Fame on Morrison’s 1991 album Hymns to the Silence , gets a righteous kick from DeFrancesco, while the backing band of Dan Wilson (guitar), Troy Roberts (sax) and Michael Ode (drums) meshes seamlessly, giving Van the Man all he needs to flex his voice—still just as freewheeling, interpretive and soulful as it’s ever been. And then there are the standards: Cole Porter’s “Miss Otis Regrets” and the classic “Every Day I Have the Blues” stand out, with DeFrancesco taking a silky trumpet solo on the former and Morrison clearly reveling in the live atmosphere of the latter. (“That’s my kind of way to hear this stuff,” he laughs, after the band stops the song on a dime.) For that matter, the album sounds like a succession of first or second takes recorded live, capturing all the spontaneity on which Morrison thrives. In the wake of last year’s Roll With the Punches and Versatile , it caps a compelling chapter that finds the 72-year-old Northern Irish singer in prime fighting shape.