Artist:     Eric Bibb

Album:     Global Griot

Label:     Stony Plain Records

Release Date:     10.26.2018

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Smooth-singing, US bluesman Eric Bibb’s latest offering is a full 24-track double disc release. Already receiving plaudits and murmurings about it being his best release to date, it’s hard to listen without some preconceptions burrowing their way in. And yet, while it is certainly one of Bibb’s best releases, I’m not sure I’d go quite as far as saying it’s his best yet, because Bibb always has his eye on the prize, a man with a musical mission and a passion to match, always ready to deliver yet more quality and the occasional surprise.

With this latest, he has certainly pulled out some surprises that nevertheless seem somehow familiar to those who know and admire his work. The title, Global Griot holds a clear hint at what to expect inside here, with an all-enveloping Afro-blues vibe and his ever-melodic fretwork coupled by his mellow vocals, dripping like buttered rum on a winter night. In many ways this is an album that we could have expected from Bibb. Helped by Habib Koitio and Soko Cissokhu on kora, Bibb pulls in a few old, back-catalogue numbers, here given an Afro twist and rhythmic roll; his version of “Needed Time,” always a perennial favorite for Bibb, is genuinely outstanding. At other times, Bibb covers some older, familiar songs that we all know and love, probably from his own New York childhood influences—the likes of Doc Watson, Pete Seeger and the folk revivalists.

Though I’m reluctant to suggest Global Griot is Mr. Bibb’s personal best to date, there’s one thing that seems a certainty: Bibb is taking us somewhere special here, and moving on with this remarkable release.

—Iain Patience