I, Flathead: The Songs Of Kash Buk and The Flowns

Okay. I don’t want you to panic, but I’m going to say something and I want you to remain calm. You ready? Okay – this is a concept album. Okay, deep breaths. I’ve something else to say and it may also come as a shock. Ready? Okay. It’s really, really good. Yes, Ry Cooder, the roots-obsessed slide guitar player, collector of world musicians and the organising intelligence behind the Buena Vista Social Club, has produced the third concept album in a trilogy (I haven’t heard the first two instalments) and it also comes with a 104-page novella. Normally such behaviour indicates a deep creative malaise and it usually happens after an artist has lost sight of himself in the darkness of his own cavernous rectum. But Cooder has never lacked ambition. And this is angular, gutsy, country bar-rock with fantastic jazz, blues, mariachi and spoken word interludes. It’s all sung from the croaky and jaundiced perspective of a good-ole-boy bar-band singer. Sometimes people can really find themselves when they’re pretending to be somebody else.