RECORDS / New Releases: Boz Scaggs: Some Change (Virgin America, CD/tape)

A decade spent running a San Francisco restaurant doesn't seem to have dulled the appetite of the stylish blue-eyed soul singer best remembered for the proto-yuppie disco music of 'Lowdown' and 'Lido Shuffle'. In fact this new album is much better than his hits: using only a handful of musicians (including the incomparable Booker T Jones on occasional Hammond organ), and with the production pared back so far that you might be listening to a set of deluxe demos, it's a return to the intimacy of his early-Seventies Columbia albums. There are classic songs here: principally the loping title track (on which Scaggs's guitar solo perfectly combines Duane Allman's aggression with Mark Knopfler's sweet lyricism) and a pair of ballads, 'Sierra' and 'Lost It', which he sings with a wonderfully refined passion. At 50, he's made what may be the comeback album of all time.