Album: Gregg Allman, Low Country Blues (Rounder)

Recorded shortly before he underwent a liver transplant last summer, the T-Bone Burnett-produced Low Country Blues is Gruntin' Gregg Allman's first album in 14 years, and it's the best work he's done since the Allman Brothers' Seventies heyday.

Horns smoulder atmospherically, Gregg's Hammond organ broods darkly, Doyle Bramhall's bottleneck guitar lines snake menacingly, and the whole affair is rooted in the brilliantly illustrative undercarriage of premier rhythm section Jay Bellerose and Dennis Crouch. Allman himself has rarely sung better, his bearded baritone resembling Bobby Bland on the fuller arrangements, but hauntingly desolate on country-blues material like Skip James's "Devil Got My Woman". An unexpected triumph.

DOWNLOAD THIS I Can't Be Satisfied; Devil Got My Woman; Tears, Tears, Tears; I Believe I'll Go Back Home; Rolling Stone