The superlative drummer Brian Blade’s Fellowship Band has retained the nucleus of the line-up that recorded the eponymous debut release in 1998. Marking its 20th anniversary, Body and Shadow is the band’s fifth recording and while that’s hardly a good return, the band have a close rapport that goes back a long way to the drummer’s undergraduate years in New Orleans with his co-writer/pianist Jon Cowherd. The band ups the dosage of the kind of blissfully mellow acoustic Americana explored on previous 2014 album Landmarks with folk, alt.rock/country and gospel roots forming the spine of Body and Shadow, not least on Blade’s prayer-like title-track trilogy of morning, noon and night. All are originals save for two renditions of the spiritual ‘Have Thine Own Way Lord’, one that features Jon Cowherd solo on harmonium and the other, a full band version. In that sense it shares common ground with the drummer’s work with Norah Jones, Joni Mitchell and the quietly influential saxophonist-composer David Binney rather than the progressive improv of Wayne Shorter’s quartet, or his more traditionally jazz-centred role with Joshua Redman or Kenny Garrett. Only on Cowherd’s gospel-y ‘Duality’, featuring Myron’s Walden’s yearning alto sax solo, and the poppy jazz Metheney-esque ‘Broken Leg Days’, does the band open up to any lengthy improv. Body and Shadow though feels like a cohesive album rather than a set of individual tracks, and the high quality musicianship only adds to the warm depths of the collective dialogue.