One thing you don't get on The River Doesn't Like Strangers is chorus after chorus of playing the changes 1950s or 60s style although Chelsea Carmichael can certainly do this on demand. Nor is there yards of minute improvisation around routines and familiar jazz licks that you might hear on a hundred records when players like to pretend they are their heroes and forget to be themselves. What you do however obtain is pithy statement, a lot of power and direct melodies that are grounded in an organic rhythmical development. Accessible, they have a catchy lilt to them but aren't so simple that you tire of them either. The Warrington London-based player heard back in the summer live playing baritone saxophone with the Nu Civilisation Orchestra, is the first artist on Shabaka Hutchings' label Native Rebel. Players joining the saxist choosing tenor on the record include Dave Okumu on guitar, Tom Herbert formerly of Polar Bear on bass and Eddie Hick from Sons of Kemet on drums with Shabaka producing. Choice Okumu-Herbert underpinning is significant in the fabric of the infrastructure of the sound in quite a few places and enhances the rawness that Carmichael especially cultivates on 'Noor' when the saxist escapes the strictness of some of the settings on the record. 'Fractals' right at the end is for me the best trip of all. Okumu is very atmospheric on it and Herbert's insistent riffing is delicious. Carmichael finds a new angle on a melody that twists and turns highly melodically and morphs instead into an unlikely 21st century jazz lullaby. A very impressive album and one of the UK's best jazz releases of the year. SG. Out on Friday