RETURN OF THE STORYTELLER

Live: Return of the Storyteller - his third live album and nineteenth overall - plays like a masterclass by one man with a guitar and a freewheeling imagination. Threading his husky-voiced phrasing through a likable cosmic cowboy manner, he invites you on a tour of tunes humorous ("Big Finish," and the have-meets- have-not "In Between Jobs"), Proustian ("Play a Train Song," "Too Soon To Tell," and the lump-in-the-throat snapshot of John Prine on "Handsome John") and heart-worn ("Like a Force of Nature," "The Very Last Time," "Roman Candles"). As the fifteen-song set unfolds, you can feel a tangible bond building between Snider and his fans. - While the album captures what Snider laughingly calls his "second tour - because I went out on the road in '94 and never went home until the pandemic" - it acts as both a summing up of a thirty-year career and a look ahead.