Covers is built around the appealing format of an acoustic jazz trio with an electric lead instrument. The bass and drums are sensitively recorded, while the full sonic splendor of Codjia's electric guitar is evenly presented in the mix. He is, as ever, an imaginative soloist as concerned with the shape and texture of sounds as with the melodic lines. The novelty in his playing on this disc is a slightly grittier, John Scofield-like approach.

Some songs are pleasingly pretty, like Tom Waits' "Martha" or Leonard Cohen's "Halleluyah." Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" is true to the original's folksy character, only to explode in a swirling psychedelic interlude (a second Marley cover here, "Natural Mystic," reveals a bass line that owes its lineage to the portentous bass motif from the "Acknowledgement" section of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme (Impulse!, 1964)). The only unambiguously "jazz" number is "Children's Play Song," a lesser-known Bill Evans tune from his Verve years that's among this album's subtler pleasures. (ALL ABOUT JAZZ)

MANU CODJA – Guitar
Jerome Regard – Double Bass
Philippe Garcia - Drums