There may be no music more appropriate for a long hot evening than the sleepy-time-down-South singing and guitar playing of J J Cale. Several of the songs on Live, which was recorded at various venues in the USA and Europe between 1990 and 1996, are from the distant backwaters of his catalogue: "After Midnight", "Call Me The Breeze" and "Magnolia" go back all the way to his 1972 debut album, Naturally; "Cocaine" and "Ride Me High" to 1976's Troubadour; "Sensitive Kind" and "Thirteen Days" to 1979's 5. Over the years Cale has tinkered with them a little but their essential feel is seldom changed. Indeed, they sometimes sound even more spacious and pastoral. These concert recordings, though presenting Cale for the most part in band settings, focus so tightly on the leader that you are hardly aware of anyone else: just those long-drawn-out guitar phrases twisting in the air like twirls of smoke from a summer night's barbecue. --Tony Russell