Art born from tragedy doesn't always cut it, no matter how sympathetic we may be to the artist's pain. Yet Scofield's meditations on the loss of his son somehow transcend the personal and remind us of music's restorative powers. Past Present, as the title suggests, finds Sco returning to some very rich roots. The current line-up echoes his excellent 1990s band that released the gorgeous Meant To Be and What We Do, but now with Larry Grenadier. Like that band these songs have an intimate exuberance and are never far from the blues. But Sco doesn't try so hard here, some of those formerly knotty lines are unravelled and there's more space to breathe. Each song is a corker: joyous run outs like ‘Chap Dance’ – Sonny Rollins meets Rogers and Hammerstein – bob up against the blues bop intricacies of the title track; the swaggering blues of ‘Get Proud’ rises alongside the sing-in-the-shower catchiness of the bitter-sweet ‘Mr Puffy’, while the dirty groove of ‘Slinky’ has to muscle down with joyous swingers like ‘Enjoy The Future’ or the lyrical whimsy of ‘Hangover’. A world of emotions, all delivered with grace, love and nary a note of self-consciousness. Sco's back, and it's classic Sco at that.