Ry Cooder- The Ry Cooder Anthology: The UFO has landed

Rating:

* * *

At the age of 61, guitarist-singer Cooder isn't slowing down any. With more than 30 albums and soundtracks under his belt - and a possible retirement fund built from the success of 1997's

Buena Vista Social Club

- Cooder has released three albums in the past four years including last year's

I, Flathead

, the third in his "California Trilogy" after

Chavez Ravine

and

My Name Is Buddy

.

Interestingly, nothing from the possibly overexposed Buena Vista is included in this double disc overview of nearly 40 years of recording compiled by his son Joachim, who assembled the tracks as a non-chronological ramble.

It swerves with Cooder snr's occasional early chart success (with Johnny Cash's

Get Rhythm

, Doc Pomus'

Little Sister

, his own

Down in Hollywood

) to excerpts from the impressionist slide-blues of his film scores like

Paris Texas, Southern Comfort, Crossroads (film clip below)

and

Alamo Bay

among others - which have arguably endured better than the movies themselves.

As well as forgoing his Cuban adventure, the 34 tracks have not time for Cooder's wider World Music adventures (in the 90s he also did albums with V. M. Bhatt, Ali Farka Toure and the Zydeco Party Band). But there is plenty of evidence of Cooder's quietly dazzling playing down the years and why he remains a one-man American music institution.

Russell Baille