Ry Cooder belongs to the elite group of guitarists, Eric Clapton and BB King among them, whose style can be identified by a single note – a mournful, keening slide tone that evokes tumbleweed rolling through a Wim Wenders movie. Yet he's one of the few major rock stars who could walk down a high street unrecognised, having avoided live performance here for decades.
It is British pub-rocker Nick Lowe who deserves the credit for bringing Cooder back on stage. Lowe briefly played alongside Cooder in the short-lived group Little Village in the early 1990s; when they reconvened for a benefit show in San Francisco earlier this year, Cooder enjoyed the experience so much that Lowe suggested spinning it out for a short European tour.
It had begun to seem as if Cooder had abandoned the guitar altogether in favour of film soundtracks and an ambassadorial role in world music projects such as the Buena Vista Social Club. Yet in 2005 he released an album, Chavez Ravine, that turned into a quirky trilogy featuring lost Latino communities, dragster racers and dustbowl folk anthems narrated by a cat.
This set, though, is free of social protest songs sung in Spanish or whimsical bluegrass tunes about mice. Accompanied only by Lowe on bass and son Joachim on drums, Cooder launches into the riff from Fool for a Cigarette, from the 1974 album Paradise and Lunch. It causes an audible gasp of pleasure from an audience of mostly middle-aged men who never thought they would hear Cooder play gnarly slide guitar again.
He still sings like a bullfrog; in fact, his gravelled larynx is now so expressive that it's like an instrument in its own right. He even backs his partner up on some of Lowe's best-known tunes: (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding becomes a gentle English folk ballad with Cooder adding shimmering, Hawaiian flourishes. As musical combinations go, it reminds you of those bizarre crisp flavours, such as chilli and chocolate or Cajun squirrel, that really ought not to work, but somehow turn out to be strangely more-ish.
At the Festival theatre, Edinburgh, tonight (box office: 0131-529 6000). Then touring.
