Joachim Cooder

★★★★ Over That Road I’m Bound NONESUCH. CD/DL/LP Chip off the old block finds his own seam of inspiration. There’s something of his dad Ry’s lightly worn musicology about Joachim Cooder’s Nonesuch debut. A buoyant and joyful long-player that gives props to the collected songs of Uncle Dave Macon, country music progenitor and Grand Ole Opry star of the early 20th century, it includes vaudeville tunes, folk songs and spirituals, many of which have themes of travel and transience. Dad guests on banjo, guitar and bass, and Rayna Gellert’s fiddle-playing shines, but the all-important twist is the welcome ubiquity of Joachim’s electric mbira, a chipper relative of the African thumb piano which can twinkle like a Fender Rhodes or chink like a tiny gamelan ensemble. The instrument’s percussive plinks and sunny tonalities lend things a crosscontinental flavour, Maconcurated tunes such as the title track and Come Along Buddy not just celebrated, but tastefully reinvented, too. James McNair