The Stone Roses’ singer’s first solo album for a decade is in some ways reminiscent of his first, 1998’s Unfinished Monkey Business. After the Roses had imploded, Brown turned in a defiantly lo-fi set of songs that edged out of that group’s long shadow. Now that, 21 years on, the Roses have possibly wilted once again – “Don’t be sad it’s over, be happy that it happened”, Brown said at their last gig, two years ago – and once again the 55-year-old has turned in an idiosyncratic set of songs laden with his personal stamp. Big producers or celebrity guest slots are shunned as King Monkey produces himself, recruits his two sons as musicians and turns to reliable influences: there are Beatles and Hollies melodies, Jimi Hendrix guitar squiggles and grooves built from funk and reggae.

Lead single First World Problems audibly echoes Primal Scream’s Loaded, itself a cousin of the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil. The plaintive Breathe and Breathe Easy – delivered with just voice and acoustic guitar – could be a distant cousin of the Roses’ Your Star Will Shine.

Brown dreamily sings about “the everness of now” and in similarly hazy The Dream and the Dreamer eulogises the musician-as-outsider.

If It’s Raining Diamonds describes a dream of palm trees and, well, pelicans, there are fleeting but significant glimpses of Brown’s political edge. He sings about “brainwashed sheep” and turns Mikey Dread’s Break Down the Walls (“… that separate us”) into a sublime anthem for these times.

The choice of Barrington Levy’s Black Roses (rendered as a rocker) seems to be significant, but perhaps more telling are the lines in the soaring From Chaos to Harmony, where Brown asks: “Why do Roses all turn to stone? Too much poison …”. He concludes: “I’m still here, singing my song.” Throughout, his oft-criticised singing is tone-perfect and balm-like. Ripples isn’t a juggernaut comeback, but it’s a beguiling, often beautiful album that quietly but purposefully announces his return to the fray, as ever, on his own terms.