The Prodigal Son

Ry Cooder's first band, back in the 1960s, was called the Rising Sons; here the prodigal comes home by returning to the blues, folk, gospel and roots-rock that first inspired him all those years ago. Yet if it's a return to the style of his early Americana albums such as Boomer's Story and Into the Purple Valley, his craft and his artistry have moved on to an entirely different, riper level. For years Cooder hated his own singing, only really finding his voice on 2005's Chávez Ravine. Here he sings with a gravitas and conviction you’d associate with John Lee Hooker or Son House.

In the subtlest way, he's also added elements from his world music adventures, such as the rhythmic balafon and calabash groove on the stonking R&B tune ‘Shrinking Man’ and the VM Bhatt guitar tropes he drops into Blind Willie Johnson's ‘Nobody's Fault but Mine.’ Cooder has also blossomed as a songwriter and his compositions here are as good as any of the classic covers and trad songs that sit alongside them. ‘Jesus and Woody’, his tribute to Mr Guthrie, is quite extraordinary in its poignancy; it's hard to think of anybody else except Bob Dylan entering such imaginative hinterlands to conceive such a song. It's a huge call to make in such a capacious career, but The Prodigal Son sounds like Cooder's crowning moment: the album he always wanted to make but never quite knew how to until now.