Artist:     Tommy Emmanuel

Album:     Best of Tommysongs

Label:     CGP Sounds/Cruzen Street Records

Release Date:     5.08.2020

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When Australian wonder-picker Tommy Emmanuel delivers a new album, the musical world stops, holds its collective breath and listens. Emmanuel is nothing less than unique, a description that barely covers the bases this guy hits with astonishing mastery and beauty. With Best of Tommysongs, we have another extraordinary release, full to bursting with his playful fretwork and jaw-dropping talent.

Culled from a range of earlier offerings, this 24-track double album holds the key to much of his success with his eager-for-more fanbase. Tracks squeezed in here include many of his live showcase specials, cuts that never fail to delight and astonish: “Train to Dusseldorf,” “Mombassa,” “Timberland” and a raft of other notable, melodic greats from his usual repertoire, plus the bonus of some newly written numbers.

The late, great Nashville monster-picker, Chet Atkins was not only a fan of this guy, but dubbed him a Certified Guitar Player, a genuinely remarkable accolade shared with only four others, Marcel Dadi, John Knowles, Steve Wariner and Jerry Reed. Listening to this fabulous curated collection, it’s easy to understand just why Emmanuel is in that rare handful of truly top-league of guitarists.

In many ways Best of Tommysongs is perhaps the perfect introduction to Emmanuel and his marvellous music, ranging as it does across decades of work and highlighting the Ozzie’s remarkable ability to achieve bubbling magic with only six-strings and a lump of wood. His percussive style and mastery is always there, rolling along just below the surface but it’s really the melodic, harmonic genius coupled with his flat-out, full-throttle complex fingerpicking that always shines.

If there’s a surprise here it may be the omission of one of his trademark pieces, “Classical Gas,” a number that leaves audiences at his live gigs open-eyed with wonder every time. And, maybe, its omission is no bad thing, for that’s a track best caught as part of his sizzling live sets anyway. Emmanuel has seldom sounded better than here. If there’s anyone out there yet to discover this man and his music, this could be the perfect time to give him a try.

—Iain Patience