Neal Black & Larry Garner: Guilty Saints (Dixiefrog)

Another Euro-American collaboration for Louisiana veteran Larry Garner.

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Neal Black & Larry Garner: Guilty Saints album artwork

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Larry Garner has forged a distinctive style over 25 years, but it’s likely that he no longer has the name recognition to maintain a recording career unassisted; hence his 2014 CD with Michael Van Merwyk and now this with Neal Black, who has a considerable European reputation. Black is a versatile guitarist, and when playing together the two gel very effectively. The songs, written by one or the other of them or in cahoots, are about everything from relationships with women to bigger subjects like false friendship, poverty and the state of the world, making the album a mixed gallery of large, eventful canvases and smaller conversation pieces. But with no disrespect to Black, we do hope to hear Garner on his own again.

Tony Russell
Tony Russell

A music historian and critic, Tony Russell has written about blues, country, jazz and other American musics for MOJO, The Guardian and many specialist magazines. He has also acted as a consultant on several TV documentaries, and been nominated for a Grammy three times for his authorship (with Ted Olson) of the books accompanying the Bear Family boxed sets. He is the author of Blacks, Whites and Blues (1970), The Blues: From Robert Johnson to Robert Cray (1997) and Country Music Originals: The Legends and the Lost (2007).