THE BAND: “Jericho” (Castle Communications)

INITIAL FEARS were that this album would be an irredeemable disaster – an unintentional parody of the Band’s sublime work on early, seminal albums such as The Band and Music From Big Pink. The fact that this CD’s cover contained a quasi-Van Gogh painting of Levon Helm’s garish pink home in Woodstock reinforced those fears.

But Band fans can rest easy. This album is neither a parody, nor a project callously plundering the music of one of the best acts in the history of rock, in the name of commerce. On the contrary, it’s easily a match for anything they recorded in the past.

And, with or without Robbie Robertson, and the late Richard Manuel (whose last, immensely moving recording, ‘Country Boy’, features on this album), they still are one of the best bands in the business. Even more so now. Mostly because, as a unit that has played together in various forms for more than 35 years they now are almost like lovers whose guts and souls are tied together by ribbons and chains.

These guys seem to need to breathe in the same direction to create perfect music, as in the union of voices when Rick Danko and Levon Helm harmonise on ‘The Caves of Jericho’ and Dylan’s ‘Blind Willie McTell’. The latter is also blessed with the kind of musical coda that will either blow you away or, if it doesn’t, prove you died three days ago.

Helm recently commented that he believes that Garth Hudson, once described as ‘the Band’s secret weapon’, is “playing better than he ever did” and he’s right. Check his Irish accordion licks on Springsteen’s ‘Atlantic City’ if you don’t believe me. The same applies to “new boys” in the band such as Richard Bell who used to play in Janis Joplin’s Full Tilt Boogie Band, and to Jim Weider and Randy Ciarlante.

Make no mistake, this is a band of musicians who deserve to describe themselves as a band, maybe even to a greater degree than they did when Robbie Robertson’s ego set them on that path to ‘pop’ stardom and full tilt destruction, a fate they avoided by disbanding in the mid ’70s. But now they’re back and Levon Helm isn’t the only one who hopes this album is such a success in countries like Ireland that we may, finally, get to see The Band here in concert.

Buy this album and make sure!

• Joe Jackson