Dante, TS Eliot, er, Jesus: they all found 33 a most creative age, so why not Paul Booth? This, his fifth album, finds him in the company of three quality trios, each playing songs with a three in their title. You're getting the drift now, right? But there's nothing else tricksy about this fine release that finds Booth at the top of his game as both player and composer. The “young Tubby Hayes”tag could have been an awful weight around his shoulders, but Booth easily justifies it: like Hayes, he can dance and sing on top of the beat, always a melody man but equally he can crack a note and go free whenever the spirit takes him. Each of these world-class trios have their own voice. With Penn and Brewer Booth is most intense, rich and soulful on his ‘Menage a Trois’, or dark and blue on ‘Tres Palabras’. The organ trio swings languidly on Jaco's ‘Three Views of A Secret’, but explodes into rapscallion R&B on Booth's own ‘Three's A Crowd’ with Stanley outstanding. But it's the guitar trio that steals the show. It's hard to imagine another guitarist than Phil Robson, steeped as he is in a Brit-rock and folk feel, digging so deep into those dark descending Nick Drake chords on ‘Three Hours’. Robson's a consummate rhythm man and on the latin vibe of ‘Chorino Triangular’ his bubbling groove and harmonic sense frees Booth to soar above him. Gorgeous and irrepressible. Tubby who?