Following his well received Baker’s Dozen, the mellifluous guitar man strikes out (someone had to say it) in a new direction. If Stryker’s previous release was a nod to his soul-jazz era with Stanley Turrentine, As We Are finds him cosying up with a string quartet. He’s also co-opted an A-list rhythm section in Blade and Patitucci. Stryker was keen to integrate the strings sound, not just have them as a contrasting colour. So the tone is set by the obviously monikered ‘Overture’ which has a modernist tang to it. And you’re never far from Samuel Barber when Americans employ strings as on the romantic but melancholic ‘As We Were’. Sara Caswell’s solos also freshen the smooth tone, notably as she swings out on the bar-stool blues of ‘Soul Friend’. Credit to Shore for those string arrangements, whose restrained keys set Stryker in an elegant light. Understandably, Blade (notably on ‘Lanes), and Patitucci (check out ‘Hope’) get plenty of space. Given such a nesting around him who isn’t going to sound good? But his take on Nick Drake’s ‘River Man’, melodic, wistful, hardly touches the darkness at the song’s heart in the way, say, Phil Robson does.