The 59-year-old New York-based vibraphonist Joe Locke is not a musician that’s ever on-trend or part of a so-called cutting-edge, but he’s a deceivingly adventurous and high-spirited post-fusion-era vibraphonist all the same, with a firm and skilful grasp of the instrument’s improvising tradition. The new album, Subtle Disguise, follows its more conceptual predecessor Love is a Pendulum from 2015. A pair of covers sung by the onetime blues-soul star vocalist Raul Midón, Bob Dylan’s ‘Who Killed Davey Moore?’ and Blind Willie Johnson’s ‘Motherless Children’ highlight cases of social and political injustice, but the treatments have an easy-going MOR tone to them that hardly get the points across. Locke’s harmonically-rich, explosive phrases and luminous tone are strengths that are underused here and though it’s good to hear the underrated David Binney guest on sax, Adam Rogers’ makes a more token jazz-rock contribution. Of the originals, Locke’s ballad ‘Make Me Feel Like It’s Raining’ is a sweet yet slightly ponderous tribute to his biggest influence Bobbie Hutcherson. Not at his usual level.