"The Prodigal Son", Ry Cooder's new release

"The Prodigal Son" is Ry Cooder's first new solo album in six years and is set for release May 11, 2018!

RY COODER is not a religious man – on the contrary, he casts a cold eye on its organized form – but he has just made an album stuffed with gospel music and hymns, all from the best part of a century ago. What gives? As the greatest curator and interpreter of Americana in all its diversity, Cooder has always loved this music; go back to his very first album (there are well over 30) and you’ll find devotional songs by Alfred Reed and Blind Willie Johnson, who both figure on The Prodigal Son.

The eight ‘reverend’ cuts here – there is also a trio of originals – take assorted forms, from the dreamy visions of the afterlife on Carter Stanley’s “Harbor Of Love” to the rip-snorting title track, where Cooder is joined by a trio of gospel vocalists.
Every cut gets a different setting, for which Cooder credits his son, drummer and visioner Joachim. 

The exuberance shines through, one reason The Prodigal Son often feels like something from Cooder’s 1970s canon, another being that while reverence provides a theme, Cooder is no longer boxed in to a concept album like “I, Flathead” or “Pull Up Some Dust And Sit Down”.

One might expect more in the way of bile and anger from Ry Cooder, but an album that meditates long on mortality is perhaps his response to the darkening of the political landscape. He describes the music as “a conduit for feelings and experiences from other times”, but also as “a sense of force beyond the visible”.*

Here are two songs from this album:

* From MOJO, June 2018