Van Morrison is to release his new album Keep It Simple in March. The new album, his first studio album since Pay The Devil, comes hard on the heels this month of seven mid-price reissues of deep back catalogue including Tupelo Honey and the classic live album Its Too Late to Stop Now all with bonus tracks and three compilations last year.

Although details are sketchy, the album is to be also issued in the States in March on the Lost Highway label. It contains 11 songs and is thought to be stylistically an album of jazz, folk, blues, Celtic, country, soul and gospel. Track titles include Soul, That's Entrainment, Song of Home and How Can A Poor Boy. Morrison plays the Hammersmith Apollo, London on Friday 18 January.